McLeodUSA’s SIP Trunking Rated Compliant with Avaya IP Telephony Solutions for Small and Medium Businesses

Company Selected for Membership in Avaya DeveloperConnection Program

At today’s COMPTEL PLUS Fall 2007 Convention & Expo, McLeodUSA announced that the company’s Dynamic Integrated Access service with session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking for IP PBX customers has been rated compliant with IP telephony solutions for small and medium businesses from Avaya Inc. (NYSE: AV) is a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.

McLeodUSA provides managed Internet protocol (IP) communications services to small and medium-sized enterprises in the midwestern and western United States. The company’s Dynamic Integrated Access service with SIP trunking integrates local and long-distance voice service with high-speed Internet or VPN networking over one, high-performance connection. Now the McLeodUSA service has been tested by Avaya for interoperability with Avaya IP Office, an award-winning converged voice and data communications solution used by more than 100,000 small and medium businesses around the globe.

Businesses using the combined Avaya and McLeodUSA solution can double their network efficiency by replacing higher-cost primary rate interface (PRI) connections with a SIP trunk instead. While PRIs typically cap out at 24 voice paths, McLeodUSA’s SIP trunking solution uses compression techniques to deliver up to 50 high-quality voice paths simultaneously over a single T1 connection. Customers can dynamically allocate this bandwidth among voice, data and Internet requirements and can use a Web-based control panel to revise their service and change features in real-time, from any computer with Internet access.

“Avaya IP Office with McLeodUSA SIP trunking is available now, and it’s a great way for customers to simplify and optimize their bandwidth,” said Chris MacFarland, McLeodUSA’s chief technology officer and group vice president. “By assuring interoperability in advance, we allow customers to more easily achieve communications capabilities that were once reserved for very large enterprises.”

As an outgrowth of the company’s collaboration with Avaya, McLeodUSA has been selected for membership in the Avaya DeveloperConnection program, which promotes the development, compliance-testing and co-marketing of innovative third-party products that are compatible with standards-based Avaya solutions. Member organizations have expertise in a broad range of technologies – including IP telephony, contact centers and mobility applications – helping companies transform voice into an intelligent business application that delivers true value to the bottom line.

“With the involvement of companies like McLeodUSA, our Avaya developer community has become a catalyst for rapid innovation - creating multivendor applications that help enterprises around the world unleash powerful new possibilities for operating more efficiently and effectively,” said Eric Rossman, vice president, developer relations and technical alliances, Avaya. “We help businesses embed secure, reliable intelligent communications into the very fabric of their organization so employees and customers have ready access to information regardless of where they are and how they prefer to communicate.”

Membership information and a listing of solutions developed and tested under the DeveloperConnection program are available at www.devconnectprogram.com.