Been approached by my BT Account Manager offering me a trial of a network centric VoIP Service.
The Service builds upon the Cisco Avvid, in which BTIgnite will host the call manager and provide the gateway to breakin/out of the PSTN. They will also provide a gateway to interwork with the groups existing Private PBX network
They are testsing the service with BSkyB with a subsidary called Open. Has anyone else been appraoched with this type of network centric VoIP Service from this service provider or the Cisco Hi touch team?
The Cisco Call Manager release 3.0 should be seen as a PABX. A lot of people are going for the IP centrex model which is kind of what you are describing. The network will provide all the hosting and management of gateways for you. Ebone (www.ebone.com) will be providing this kind of service.
GoBeam has commercial deployment of similar services as the AVVID. There are some limitations in the AVVID solution. I understand GoBeam has some advanced new features. Folks should check them out to see what they have to offer.