AOL Picked Broadwing for AIM Phoneline, Not Level3

Much to a lot of people's surprise, but not mine, AOL's Voice Services team went with Broadwing to power their upcoming new AIM Phoneline product. This couldn't have gone down well with Level3 which powers AOL's TotalTalk platform and was their deal to lose. One of the knocks I regularly hear about Level3, despite their quality is that they don't price out versus others, so with bandwidth becoming a comodity, their are deals to be had. But Broadwing, not to be confused with Verizon's VoiceWing, is one of the networks that can best Level3 on what the network can do, and now they have beaten them with a big win.

From what I've been able to piece together, BroadWing is providing: AIM DIDs in 50 DMAs across the United States, reaching 80% of the population. For now you have to have a USA address to use the AIM Phoneline service when it' s released later this month.

Broadwing is also providing AOL with SIP-enabled Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connectivity for the Inbound and outbound local and long distance while Intrado enables the nationwide nomadic e911 service. But what I suspect won the bidding was that BroadWing was also able to provides total system solution support, including serious project management, network and telephone number management and a turnkey PSTN integration services enabled by their PSTNConnect SIP product. This takes a lot of the burden off of AOL's management, which wants to focus on developing and marketing the applications, not being the plumbers and electricians with this new offering.