XO Communications Inc. announced Monday an agreement with Sprint Wholesale Solutions to use Sprint’s Wholesale Mobile Integration services to offer converged wireline and wireless services for small and medium businesses.
XO expects to launch the service commercially in mid-2012. At that time, the services will be available for sale through XO’s Business Partners, according to a company spokesperson.
XO will not be reselling Sprint’s wireless services in a traditional MVNO relationship, the spokesperson said. Instead, XO will leverage Sprint’s WMI services and wireless network to offer a new fixed mobile convergence solution that extending PBX or VoIP features to the wireless handset. A future capability of the XO solution will enable calls made from mobile phones within a customer’s premise to be connected via Wi-Fi access points and routed over existing wireline network infrastructure.
“This agreement underpins XO Communications’ commitment to deliver innovative services for our customers and is another step in our converged services strategy to bring together wireline and wireless services over a single IP-enabled network infrastructure," said Don MacNeil, chief marketing officer for XO Communications. “This capability will further differentiate XO Communications in the market as one of the only providers to offer a very unique fixed mobile convergence offering for our customers that simplifies the management of their wireless and wireline communications needs."
Launched last year, Sprint WMI enables its telecommunications service to integrate their wireline and wireless voice networks into one converged solution. Features include single-number calling to reach both an employee’s desk and mobile phone, seamless call transfers between the two devices, and one integrated voice mail. Sprint’s WMI also extends a broad range of business desk phone features to an end-user’s mobile device like abbreviated (four-digit) extension dialing, call center applications, selective call acceptance/rejection and more.
