MetaSwitch, a company which has thrived selling to smaller and mid-sized independent telcos, today announced the landing of a bigger fish – Embarq. The Embarq Business unit will be using MetaSwitch’s softswitch, media gateway and MetaSphere applications suite to offer its customers a service bundle that includes dedicated Internet access, voice service and IP-enabled advanced features.

“The key thing here is that this is another datapoint, a confirmation point, of what we have been doing for quite some time, whether on the consumer side or the business side,” said Graeme MacArthur, chief executive officer, MetaSwitch. “Our dominance in recent years has been in Tier 3 CLECs and ILECs and IOCs, but we have always served Tier 1s like BT and AT&T and Qwest, and we will continue to be doing this. We hope to continue growing this business.”

After starting in the softswitch market, MetaSwitch developed applications to help drive softswitch deployment by giving its service provider customers revenue-generating services they could deliver to business customers, to lift VoIP above the cheap service fray and make it a productivity tool.

Embarq will offer what it calls Embarq Smart IP Enterprise to provide features such as click-to-dial integrated with Microsoft Outlook, advanced voice mail, rules-based call-forwarding, Auto Attendant and Music on Hold, SimRing, sequential ring and remote click-to-dial. Many of these features are intended to enable smaller businesses automate and streamline the process of handling calls both to make their employees more productive and to present a more professional face to customers and the outside world.

“This is for any enterprise customer but there is a sweet spot with a huge number of businesses that may need 10-24 lines, but don’t want to have to invest in in-house technology and the tech staff to run those systems,” MacArthur said. “Someone like Embarq can bring a rich set of services that will let their customers make their businesses more productive and give them customers better service through more responsive communications, and faster handling of incoming requests and purchases.”

In addition, the move to IP telephony allows businesses so save money, MacArthur said.