Arbinet Selects NexTone to Enhance VoIP Service Flexibility; Multiprotocol Session Controller also the Foundation for Arbinet's New SoftSwitchAxcess Service.

GAITHERSBURG, Md. -- NexTone(TM) Communications, the market leader in scalable session management of real-time IP services such as voice over IP (VoIP), today announced that Arbinet, the leading electronic marketplace for communications trading, has deployed NexTone's Multiprotocol Session Controller (MSC) to expand its current VoIP service offerings and efficiently route and manage traffic for its growing carrier and VoIP service provider Membership.

"NexTone allows us to support the VoIP market more efficiently," said Curt Hockemeier, president and CEO of Arbinet. "To date we have routed more than 2 billion minutes of VoIP traffic on thexchange. NexTone will help us scale to support our Members' growing demand for VoIP connectivity for their global voice trading."

Arbinet Members anonymously buy and sell voice calls based on route quality and price through its centralized marketplace. Members place orders through a Web-based interface and its trading platform matches these orders and delivers them through state-of-the-art facilities. More than 335 communications service providers, including 8 of the world's ten largest international carriers, trade voice on thexchange.

About 40 percent of Arbinet Members connect to thexchange using VoIP and NexTone's MSC provides a solid platform to manage the rapidly growing need for VoIP peering -- interconnection of VoIP based buyers and sellers at the VoIP level. Arbinet also uses NexTone's MSC to extend its switch partitioning business into the VoIP world with SoftSwitchAxcess(SM), a softswitch partitioning product for VoIP carriers expanding their business and looking for an efficient way to manage that growth without capital investment.

"We evaluated other products, but found that NexTone was the best fit for our needs," said Steven Heap, CTO and vice president of business development at Arbinet. "We were looking for something more than a simple firewall interface between us and our carrier Members. We need complex routing and session management capabilities which can be fed by our real-time routing engine to build a custom route plan for each buying Member each four hours. NexTone gives us that flexibility."

"Arbinet is a unique company that is an enabling force in the growth of the VoIP market," said Raj Sharma, president of NexTone. "With our real-time session management and routing capabilities Arbinet is addressing the growing market of all IP carriers while at the same time expanding their business with their new SoftSwitchAxcess partition service."

About NexTone Communications

NexTone Communications develops carrier-grade products that provide scalable control of real-time IP services, such as voice over IP (VoIP). NexTone solutions enable carriers, service providers and enterprises to securely, simply, and cost-effectively interconnect networks for end-to-end control and management of IP traffic. NexTone's real-time IP technology can dramatically reduce carrier capital expenditures while providing ongoing operational efficiencies, such as reduced interconnect turn-up time and simplified network operations. NexTone is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland USA with domestic and International sales offices worldwide. For more information, visit www.nextone.com.