Is VoIP coming of age? Could be.

ITXC Corp., the world’s largest provider of international Voice over Internet Protocol telephone service, is gaining worldwide market share and now is upgrading its network with switches from Cisco.

ITXC said the move will create the world’s largest VoIP network.

ITXC, based in Princeton, NJ, said it would use Cisco AS5000 Universal Gateway and PGW 2200 Softswitch VoIP hardware. ITXC provides network access to more than 175 countries, and the company said its VoIP service provides “consistent carrier class quality.”

Concerns about latency and packet loss have helped slow VoIP adoption, but ITXC has said it has a patented system, BestValue Routing, and couples that with Cisco gear to address quality concerns.

Cisco’s RTP campus is actively involved in VoIP product design through its voice technology group as well as testing.

“This is a pretty significant win, given ITXC’s service, particularly international, to major service providers around the globe,” a Cisco spokesperson tells Local Tech Wire.

According to TeleGeography 2003, ITXC is the market share leader in international VoIP calls, which represent 10 percent of the world’s international voice calls. That percentage is up four percent from the previous year.

In 2001, VoIP call minutes were some 9.634 million, nearly double the year 2000 total. Total voice traffic was 160 billion minutes in 2001, based on TeleGeography figures.

ITXC focuses on voice services and is one of the world’s largest traffic volume carriers, including standard voice and VoIP. ITXC also works with many major telephone carriers, providing transport for such firms as China Telecom, Telkom South Africa and Telecom Colombia. ITXC also works with a number of wireless providers.

“More and more often carriers us ITXC for all or part of their traffic,” said Tom Evslin, chairman and CEO of ITXC, in a statement. “Carriers have found that simplifying their networks by relying on ITXC has resulted in lower cost of ownership and higher reliability than managing a multitude of vendors in complex routing tables.

“Similarly, ITXC has found that relying on for most of its equipment needs results in lower costs and higher reliability as well as multi-vendor interoperability, which is important to ITXC and its customers. Our purchasing and support relationship with Cisco helps us deliver the very high reliability our carrier customers require when our network is the only route for their traffic.”

By employing Cisco’s Voice Infrastructure and Applications Solution, ITXC said it would be able to replace its legacy voice switches in its network and retain compatibility with other networks.

Cisco: www.cisco.com

ITXC: www.itxc.com