EarthLink will use Level 3 Communications to provide its VoIP service offerings, the two companies announced Tuesday at the VON show. EarthLink will use the Level 3 (3)VoIP Enhanced Local service and offer local, long-distance and international service, including E911 service.

EarthLink will offer a primary line replacement service, to include a line-powered residential line that will operate during a commercial power outage.

“We have been working with EarthLink for quite a long time,” said Myrle McNeal, senior vice president of Consumer Voice Services for Level 3.

While the wholesale VoIP provider has seen its business steadily increase, McNeal admits the market hasn’t grown as expected.

“We would have anticipated more diversity among suppliers, that more carriers would be in the business,” he said. “Most of the service is being provided by Vonage, Cablevision and Time-Warner Cable. The overall size is about what we thought it would be. It’s just that other providers that we thought would have made it into the market have been slower getting there. And we would not have anticipated Skype to have the success they’ve had.”

Getting VoIP off the ground is proving a longer term effort than many anticipated, he added.

"If you look at Time-Warner and Cablevision, they made their decisions to get into this business two years ago, and now they are gaining in volume," McNeal said.

The enterprise VoIP market has exceeded expectations, McNeal admitted, and there are “a small but very interesting niche of companies doing interesting things with local phone numbers.”

Those include using local phone numbers in a VoIP service to do the job once done by toll-free numbers, he said.