APEX Voice Communications Announces Support for VoIP
Prepaid Billing on Cisco Gateways and Servers.

This Solution Lowers Barrier-to-Entry for Carriers
and Service Providers into a Leading Enhanced Service Market

SHERMAN OAKS, CA, MARCH 19, 2002 – APEX Voice Communications, a leading supplier of IP and TDM-based enhanced services and billing solutions to carriers, service providers and enterprises worldwide, today announced that its APEX Prepaid System now supports Cisco Universal Gateways and Access Servers for prepaid VoIP applications.  APEX Prepaid is a carrier-grade solution scaleable to hundreds of millions of minutes per month in either a centralized or distributed architecture.  APEX’s Third-Party Call Control communications protocol was used along with Cisco’s TCL IVR API and the RADIUS protocol to give carriers and service providers a truly seamlessly integrated solution.

Integrated with Cisco Gateways and Servers, the highly scaleable APEX Prepaid System provides for real-time debit accounting capabilities, allowing carriers and service providers to offer a range of VoIP services including prepaid calling, cellular, member services and support services.  Key features include rating in different currencies, special rating methods, card activation and expiration schemes, service access codes, restricted calling times and numbers, recurring charges and call routing capabilities.   The built-in relational database with SQL provides extensive reporting capabilities and allows for the integration of third-party reporting tools such as Crystal Reports.  Additionally, APEX Prepaid seamlessly integrates to the APEX Billing System to offer VoIP-based postpaid billing services.

“By integrating APEX Prepaid system with Cisco’s Universal Gateways and Access Servers, we bring to market a cost-effective, carrier-grade solution for quickly and easily entering the growing VoIP prepaid market,” said Elhum Vahdat, Executive Vice President of APEX Voice Communications.  “What we have essentially done for carriers and service providers worldwide is lowered the barrier-to-entry into one of the leading enhanced services market.”

APEX Prepaid System’s Third-Party Call Control is a proprietary communications protocol used between the APEX Prepaid process and a third-party vendor’s software for processing and pricing telecommunications transactions.  The protocol utilizes UDP to send messages between the different software packages that are variable in length with semicolon-delimited fields.  Each message contains a message type and the associated fields of information.  APEX Prepaid supports the Cisco TCL IVR API as a third-party call control system, therefore, it can bill calls made through Cisco’s VoIP Gateways and Servers.  The TCL IVR in turn makes use of Cisco's authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) using the RADIUS protocol.  APEX provides a prepaid application complete with the same pre-recorded prompts in the "Sun Audio" format used by Cisco.

The APEX Prepaid System supports any Cisco Universal Gateway and Access Server that supports the TCL IVR API.  These include the AS5850, AS5800, AS5400, AS5350, AS5300, and the AS2600.  Additional gateways products that APEX Prepaid supports include the OmniVox© Intelligent Call/Media Processor, the APEX Enhanced Switch and the Cisco VCO/4K.

Key benefits include simpler networks, due to the IVR being embedded in the Gateways and Servers; increased reliability and scalability, with the combination of two carrier-grade products; and a competitive price/performance ratio.  Key features include PC based media/script server for easy maintenance of call dialogs and prompt messages, basic prepaid call dialogs for both English and Spanish and the ability to integrate broadcast type media streams as well as Text-to-Speech services.