Sprint has begun offering hosted voice-over-IP solutions to the enterprise market using Lucent Technologies technology and its Global Network Operations Center in Denver, where Lucent recently outlined its strategy to help service providers address this market.

Sprint's IP Voice Connect is a network-based hosted service that supports local service, long-distance, IP-PBX and traditional Centrex features. It supports both voice and data communications over its global multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network or through dedicated IP connections.

"We see this as the glue between our wireline MPLS product line and our wireless product set that will unlock the power of fixed/mobile convergence," said Brian Gregory, VoIP product marketing manager for Sprint.

Lucent said last month that it currently manages more than 40 networks worldwide through its GNOC. The Lucent Converged Voice for Enterprise Solution, based on BroadSoft's BroadWorks IP Centrex platform, will be hosted in the Denver GNOC as well as Lucent's mirrored site in Lisle, Ill. The company also has GNOCs in the Netherlands; Sydney, Australia; and Hamilton, New Zealand; and is setting up a center in Poland. All these are managed by Lucent employees.

Enterprises using Sprint's IP Voice Connect service, which a Sprint spokesman referred to as a "fire the ILEC" solution, can provide remote access to work-at-home or nomadic users and can convert to IP-based communications without a large capital expense. All users would have access to the same features, including simultaneous ringing to multiple phones, unified messaging and abbreviated dialing.

The Lucent solution supports standards-based session initialization protocol VoIP capabilities while still leveraging current investments in legacy voice systems and re-using existing dialing plans and telephone numbers. And end users would still be able to administer and configure the system through a Web-based administrator portal.

Lucent's tie-in with IMS and their long partnership with Sprint will help streamline our plan to bring advanced FMC products to market," Gregory said. Currently available in 251 metropolitan service areas across 47 states and being used by a couple of large beta customers, Sprint plans to build its IP Voice Connect service into a full FMC offering. The service is covered by service level agreements (SLA) for all critical metrics for VoIP quality items such as jitter, delay and packet loss. Sprint also offers SLAs for site implementation, mean-time-to-repair and proactive outage notification.

Sprint already offers managed VoIP services through partnerships with Cisco Systems and Nortel Networks. Sometime in 2006 it will also launch a hosted IP-PBX service with Avaya as well as hosted contact center and hosted messaging solutions.

Gregory said Sprint will go after "anybody that's breathing" with this product, but the company has found that in addition to the anticipated sweet spot among greenfield opportunities and those from enterprises coming through the end-of-life cycles on their premises-based solutions, larger enterprises with 1000- to 2000-seat implementations are also showing interest.

Insight Research said last week that the U.S. managed services market will grow at a compounded rate of 22% over the next five years due to growth in all segments of the managed services value chain. The firm put the market at $94 billion by 2011.