Virtutone Networks, a provider of managed telecommunication services including business VoIP, fax over IP services, and hosted PBX (News - Alert) services, entered into the VoIP wholesale market with the launch of its wholesale division that provides telephony services to other carriers.

The company also selected Sonus Networks (News - Alert) of Massachusetts to provide a new high-powered wholesale infrastructure that can offer up to 1.2 billion minutes per month to Virtutone customers.

As a VoIP phone supplier to carriers, the company will power wholesale voice services using VoIP technology to cellular companies, telephone carriers, corporate clients, call centers, Internet-based telephony companies and cable TV companies.

"Virtutone's growth over the last three years has increased our purchasing power, particularly in Canada," said Jason Allen, Virtutone's president and chief executive officer, in a statement. “This has allowed us to provide extremely cost effective wholesale services, even to large telecommunication companies.”

 “Our entry into the North American wholesale market will allow a wide variety of telecommunication companies to purchase high quality origination and termination services at more competitive rates,"   Allen added.

The Virtutone network will be built upon the Sonus Session Border Controller 5200 that is exclusively designed for large scale, mission critical SIP-based communications. With this infrastructure investment, the company hopes to expand its footprint within the wholesale VoIP market in North America.

Business VoIP services offer several benefits and recent studies have shown that IP-based communications can reduce a business’ overall costs between 3 to 40 percent.