OREANDA-NEWS. October 26, 2012.  BT has launched a major Global IP Exchange (GIPX) hub in Singapore, to meet the demand for growing traffic over its IP Exchange platform, the wholesale service that enables communications providers to connect VoIP to VoIP and VoIP to traditional voice calls.

 The Singapore hub provides a local switch function in the Asia-Pac region, bringing BT’s GIPX service closer to customers’ networks – helping to reduce the cost of voice and data transport and improving the quality of calls by reducing interference.

 The hub is a multi-service GIPX point of presence (PoP) which helps to address the growing demand for interconnect services in the region, a by-product of the massive growth in VoIP traffic worldwide.

 BT’s GIPX service enables traffic carried over a host of different communications networks to be seamlessly ‘translated’ from one to the other in an electronic ‘clearing house’.

 It enables IP network operators from more than 170 countries around the world to interconnect to each other as well as to fixed telecoms operators and mobile network operators.

 In addition to the termination of voice minutes, the platform can carry video and data traffic across a wide range of standards and configurations.

 Demand for BT’s GIPX service has grown rapidly since it was launched globally in 2011. In the UK and globally BT’s IPX and GIPX services now support 290 communications provider customers with around 10 new global customers added every month.

 Beatriz Butsana-Sita, BT Global Services Managing Director, Global Telecom Markets, said: “We’re delighted to celebrate the commissioning of BT’s Singapore GIPX node. It’s the first full hub BT has deployed in Asia-Pac and demonstrates the confidence we have in the region.

 “Delivering our GIPX service closer to our wholesale customers in this region, serves to minimize their cost of interconnect to this world-class clearing house. But what’s more Global IP Exchange also provides an opening into BT’s platform for advanced IP services that we continue to invest in.”

 Steve Best, BT Wholesale’s Managing Director Products, added: “BT’s service is designed to simplify the technical and commercial complexity of achieving IP interoperability, leaving customers free to concentrate on meeting the needs of their end customers.

 “This quarter BT has seen a 12 per cent quarter on quarter increase in voice minutes over its GIPX platform – and the concentration of use in Asia-Pac spurred us on to deploy this new node. We expect demand to continue to grow in the region which will concentrate interconnection in Singapore and this node is now ready to meet this increase in traffic.”

 BT is looking to introduce additional full scale GIPX nodes like Singapore in the near future. It is also working on a number of developments to expand the service still further, such as the ability to support mobile 4G and video interoperability between different devices and networks.