LignUp has created the FastLign Alliance to help speed up bringing innovative IP Telephony services to market. LignUp has previously won a TMC Labs Innovation Award due to its embracing of more industry standards than you can shake a stick at. Apparently, now LignUp aims to help the VoIP industry along by aligning itself with other VoIP players to help ensure interoperability between the various VoIP components including: SIP-to-H.323 internetworking, billing issues, service activation, session border control, far end NAT traversal, VoIP peering and other VoIP connectivity issues.


Here's a snippet of the alliance news.

Level3 Joins LignUp, NexTone, Rodopi, VoIP Logic, CentricVoice, and tekVizion to Reduce Deployment Time and Implementation Costs by Delivering Managed Telephony Services to Service Provider Customers

LignUp Corporation, a provider of Web services-based voice over IP (VoIP) converged communications solutions, today announced the formation of FastLign, an industry alliance working to accelerate the adoption of IP telephony services. In addition to LignUp, core members of the FastLign Alliance include Level3, NexTone, Rodopi Software, tekVizion, CentricVoice and VoIP Logic. Through the FastLign Alliance, the companies will enable service providers to rapidly and cost effectively deliver hosted telephony services, which previously have been prohibitively time consuming and expensive to build, deploy, and manage.

"The FastLign approach to selling licenses and its managed services model is a unique approach to helping VoIP service providers get to market," said William Stofega, senior research analyst, VoIP Services, IDC. "By providing a reference architecture that is already hooked up to the network and ready for business, FastLign solves the age old problem of interoperability by jump-starting the service provider with a turnkey business solution that gets them to market faster. Between the advantages of a proven interoperable platform and the cost advantage of buying over renting, FastLign could significantly lower the current barriers to VoIP service market entry."

Until now, service providers have been required to build IP telephony services from the ground up, integrating often disparate technology and services in order to provide a complete solution. This has created a significant barrier to entry for service providers. With FastLign, service providers can take advantage of best-in-class services and software, which have been integrated, certified, and implemented by a managed services provider. FastLign allows service providers to buy licenses that are pre-integrated and certified that are available in a managed serviced environment that will allow service providers to launch services in weeks instead of months