IVR Technologies and Acme Packet Complete SIP Interoperability Testing for Prepaid Calling Card Services and Real-Time Billing

The combined offering allows next generation IP service providers to deploy advanced revenue generating applications -- such as prepaid calling cards, tandem switching and 800/900 termination -- with a powerful range of real-time billing options in a scalable, fault tolerant solution.

IVR Technologies and Acme Packet Complete SIP Interoperability Testing for Prepaid Calling Card Services and Real-Time Billing

Los Angeles, CA and Woburn, MA, - March 28, 2003 -- IVR Technologies, a software developer for IP enhanced services and real-time billing, and Acme Packet, a developer of session border controllers, announced today that Acme Packet has successfully completed SIP interoperability testing between the Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers and IVR Technologies Talking SIP. The combined offering allows next generation IP service providers to deploy advanced revenue generating applications -- such as prepaid calling cards, tandem switching and 800/900 termination -- with a powerful range of real-time billing options in a scalable, fault tolerant solution.

IVR Technologies Talking SIP, a robust, feature rich software solution for real-time interactive voice services and billing, offers a complete suite of service ready applications that provide enhanced services for increased revenue and profits. Talking SIP performs real-time call processing via SIP messaging and provides independent, script-controlled IVR prompting over RTP. Requiring only a LAN 10/100mbps connection, Talking SIP eliminates the need to consume costly PSTN ports. Talking SIP interacts with callers using pre-recorded voice prompts and performs database access for authentication, authorization and accounting -- entirely in software -- also greatly reducing the cost of the solution. Talking SIP can transfer the caller to another destination, redirecting the voice payload directly through the network while retaining supervision and control of the call.

Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers provide comprehensive security, sophisticated load balancing and failover capabilities for multiple Talking SIP servers, combating network resource inefficiencies and ensuring the even distribution of network traffic. Using network address translation (NAT) at layers 3 and 5, Net-Net hides the network topology and protects the service infrastructure from deadly denial of service attacks and overload. In addition, session timers close accounting records for calls that did not set up or terminate properly, thereby ensuring flexible, dynamic and accurate billing records. Acme Packet Net-Net is a high availability solution that ensures no interruption of existing calls or loss of signaling information for those calls -- a critical requirement for the high-quality delivery of interactive communications across IP networks.

Today, many service provider networks only take into consideration application and database redundancy while neglecting to plan for potential access failures. IVR Technologies primary goals have always been to develop IVR and real-time billing solutions that can be architected without any single points of failure while providing a highly scaleable yet unified solution," said Barry Sher, vice president business development , IVR Technologies. With Acme Packet we are exceeding our long-term objectives for value, scalability and redundancy."

The successful interoperability of our Net-Net session border controllers and IVR Technologies Talking SIP ensures that service providers can deploy enhanced voice applications over their SIP network with a scalable, fault tolerant solution that eliminates network inefficiencies and protects against devastating denial of service attacks," said Jim Hourihan, vice president marketing and product management, Acme Packet. Considering the growing market for prepaid calling card services over an IP infrastructure our partnership with IVR Technologies is extremely timely and will afford service providers a persuasive opportunity to increase revenue and profits and decrease network costs."

About IVR Technologies:
IVR Technologies is an advanced software development company emerging as a leader in the SIP space for Voice over IP enhanced services and real-time billing.

Please send reader inquiries to: IVR Technologies: 555 West Fifth Street 30th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90013: +1 (213) 455-0065.
Email: pr@ivr.com

To learn more about our company please visit our web site: http://www.ivr.com

About Acme Packet:
Acme Packet enables network service providers to deliver premium, interactive communications - voice, video and multimedia sessions - across IP network borders. Our award-winning Net-Net family of session border controllers satisfy critical security, service assurance and law enforcement requirements in wireline, wireless and cable networks. Established in August 2000 by networking industry veterans, Acme Packet is a privately held company headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts. For more information, contact us at +1 (781) 756-6800, or visit us at www.acmepacket.com.