SAN JOSE--Sonus Networks began its week with a positive earnings report that showed fourth-quarter revenue of $57.2 million, up 27% from last year and fiscal yearly revenue up 14% from 2004. It finishes the week at the VON conference with a deal from KDDI and three strategic partnerships with Atreus Systems, IP Unity and Netgear.

Sonus’ $194.6 million in revenue was not the only thing on the upswing. The company has added about 160 people, and traffic is up 70% on the Sonus Network, increasing from 10 billion minutes in 2004 to 17 billion at the end of 2005.

“To me that’s a meaningful statistic. It shows the maturity of the technology and the real growth,” said Michael Hluchyj, vice president and founder and chief technology officer at Sonus.

Japan’s KDDI gave Sonus a multimillion-dollar contract to be the exclusive vendor for its convergence-enabled packet voice network. KDDI will deploy Sonus’ GSX9000 Open Services Switch, the PSX Call Routing Server and the Sonus Insight Element Management System. In a multi-phased approach, KDDI will deploy Sonus to deliver long-distance functionality for its consumer voice service plans. KDDI plans to have 100% of its long-distance traffic on a Sonus-based VoIP network by 2008. Later, KDDI will expand its capabilities to deliver triple-play services nationwide.

“Japan has been very good to Sonus. And Japanese service providers are very aggressive in transforming their networks,” Hluchyj said.

Sonus’ new partners will help the company better address consumer VoIP, hosted business VoIP and consumer voice-over-broadband.

IP Unity, which has added some major square footage to its tradeshow display, became part of the Sonus Certified Consumer Voice over Broadband solutions this week and will work with Sonus to deliver enhanced services.

The solution will include applications from IP Unity, such as Mereon Unified Messaging, Mereon Conferencing, Collaboration, Find me-Follow me, Mereon Color Ringback Tone, and Mereon Video Messaging. The companies also will deliver joint solutions built on Sonus' IMS-ready architecture, IP Unity's IMS-compliant Mereon Media Server, Mereon Application Server, and Mereon product suite to further enhance the services capabilities of the application layer of Sonus' industry-leading IMS solutions.

A new provider of residential VoBB services, my people, is one of the first service providers to roll out the Sonus certified c-VoBB solution with IP Unity applications. Sonus and consumer electronics provider, Netgear, have partnership have conducted interoperability testing between Sonus' VoBB platform and Netgear’s line of broadband phone adapters. The Netgear Broadband Voice Adapter with Router streamlines access to the IMS-based services enabled by Sonus.

Atreus will partner with Sonus to address cost and time-to-market issues in delivering hosted VoIP services. They will focus on the delivery of value-added consumer and business voice services, including Hosted PBX, business trunking (Integrated Access), conferencing, and voice VPN services. The joint solution has been selected by one of the largest carriers in North America.

Hluchyj admits to being guilty of hyping partnerships in the early days along with everyone else, but said, “We signed up 150 partners because it was Darwin-at-work out there, you didn’t know for sure which way this thing would go. But these new partnerships are with people who are in the network and have proven themselves in the market.”