Verizon Business today announced new IP service offerings, including a version designed to make the transition to VoIP easier for businesses.

The expanded VoIP offers are intended both to protect the company's existing base of customers and to attract new business, said John Barnes, director of VoIP product development for Verizon.

"These solutions were developed to make what we offer to businesses even more powerful," he said. "We are offering a portfolio of serivces that include an architectural solution for wherever a customer happens to be from the PSTN up to IP handsets on the desktop to fully implemented and managed IP-PBX infrastructures. We want our business customers to be able to migrate to VoIP at their own pace."

The VoIP expansions include a new service called IP Flexible T-1, designed to make it easier for businesses to make the transition to an all IP network; an expanded range of IP-enabled telephones; integration of dedicated toll-free service with IP; and an advanced fraud protection service for managed IP-PBXs.

IP Flexible T-1 service allows smaller corporate sites, which today operate with a key system, to migrate to an integrated IP network without changing out their voice equipment, Barnes said.

"We provide integrated access which gives them the advantage of having one circuit over which they can dynamically allocate bandwidth," he said. "They get the advantages of IP in terms of dynamic bandwidth allocation and voice compression without making equipment changeovers which can be disruptive."

Verizon Business is adding five new phones from Polycom to its range of VoIP CPE choices, again to make the transition to VoIP easier, Barnes noted.

By adding dedicated toll-free access to its VoIP portfolio, Verizon Business is enabling business customers with a high volume of inbound voice calls to pay for them more efficiently. The service includes enhanced call routing.

Advanced Call Protection extends Verizon Business' existing anti-fraud capabilities to the VoIP environment, including proactive monitoring for early detection of fraudulent calling.

"This is a key service differentiator," said Les Goldman, product manager for managed network services for Verizon Business. "We are leveraging our patented anti-fraud service known as Sheriff. to do analysis that is continuous and around the clock through call detail records and IP-PBX records. We will take that information and process it and put it through many of our fraud algorithms. This enables us to more quickly identify fraudulent calling."