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(Editor’s Note: This article refers to an interview shot during a TMC (News - Alert) media event, as part of “Inside the Studio” special edition series. To view the entire library of videos from Road Shows and other industry shows, as well as product demos visit TMCnet Videos home page. For information on upcoming TMC events, including our August 12 open house, please contact Jaime Hernaez (jhernaez@tmcnet.com).

TMC's CEO, Rich Tehrani (News - Alert), recently interviewed Mark Benisz, vice president Americas for XConnect (News - Alert), to find out what the company has been working on recently.

Voice peering is a big area for the company. They provide peering services to other service providers, Benisz says, noting, "we were the first to launch a peering federation in The Netherlands, and our most recent federation was launched in South Africa, allowing service providers to trade traffic and end-to-end IP."

He noted the company expects such deals in the future as well.

Carriers see benefits from peering as well, he explained. "Mainly there is the ability to offer a high-quality end-to-end call with multiple hops, and in addition, there's always a cost savings, depending on the type of arrangement that's agreed upon."

But most interestingly, he said, is "the ability to offer new features over IP that can't be offered via traditional peering methods."

There's also high-definition voice, he said, which the company is involved in with their customers, "the ability to provide not only high definition voice within a network, but cross-network, which we believe is the key to mass-market adoption of these services."

There are many different types of features and services that can be offered only in a peering environment as well, he noted, as well as the standard advantages of less latency, no conversion back and forth and many other advantages -- "I think it gets really interesting when this can occur between networks," Benisz said, "and then from the service provider's perspective, the ability to offer new features, giving a competitive advantage over legacy-style services."

And addressing high-def, Benisz noted that they've successfully demonstrated cross-network HD voice, and will be launching a similar trial in the UK soon.

For more on this interview, check out the video below: