Spirit Communications gets fast return on investment with NexOSS

The Challenge

Spirit Communications found themselves facing a significant problem with telecom fraud on behalf of their customers. Criminals were able to gain access into the non-secure telephone systems or SIP phones of Spirit’s business customers. The fraudsters would use malicious software to continuously generate multiple calls to high cost foreign destinations.

Result

Spirit chose to implement SDReporter to monitor and prevent its customers from being victims of telecom fraud and NexOSS to manage the entire VoIP network.

Customer Take Away

“NexOSS is an excellent value. It is a feature rich routing solution with a very rapid return on investment. In addition, the technical support from TransNexus is always very responsive. We have been very happy with TransNexus.”

Spirit was formed in 2002 to bring several modern communication services under one roof. Spirit offers a robust selection of local and long-distance voice services and is the region’s premier provider of voice, data, internet, cloud, managed and hosted IT Services. Spirit traces its roots in the communications industry back to 1896, and has long been an innovator in telecommunications technology. Spirit’s owners pioneered the use of touch-tone dialing, direct-dialed long distance and other innovations throughout the last century.

Spirit’s own Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a mesh of multiple ten Gigabit (Gbps) circuits, connecting Spirit network nodes, peering POPs and Data Centers throughout the Carolinas. The MPLS backbone runs across intercity fiber facilities, supported by terabit-capable core routing platforms and high-capacity peering interconnections. The network was designed from the ground up to deliver maximum end-to-end throughput as well as high levels of protection, redundancy, and quality of service (QoS).

Telecom Fraud Detection

In 2013, Spirit Communications found themselves facing a significant problem with telecom fraud on behalf of their customers. Criminals were able to gain access into the non-secure telephone systems or SIP phones of Spirit’s business customers. The fraudsters would use malicious software to continuously generate multiple calls to high cost foreign destinations. Fraud events often occurred on weekends or holidays, and customers would have no idea that their phone system had been used to generate tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent phone calls.

Spirit chose to implement the TransNexus SDReporter solution to monitor and prevent its customers from being victims of telecom fraud. SDReporter integrates with Spirit’s existing BroadWorks platform by collecting and analyzing BroadWorks call detail records (CDRs). When suspicious traffic triggers a fraud alert, SDReporter can send an Open Communications Interface -Provisioning (OCI-P) command to the BroadWorks switch to block the calls or divert them to customer service. An E-mail or Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) alert is sent to the Network Operations Center (NOC) with the details of the fraud trigger. The NOC can view the details of the alert from the SDReporter web interface and unblock the calls if needed with one click.

“The impact of a single fraud event can overwhelm a small business, and few businesses have the expertise to harden their telephone systems to prevent telecom fraud attacks. Protecting our customers from the growing threat of telecom fraud is another example of how Spirit Communications is a leader in telecommunication services”, says Mark Price, Director of Operations at Spirit Communications. He adds, “Another benefit of SDReporter is that it is intuitive and easy for our technicians to use”.

Intelligent Least Cost Routing

In addition to innovation, Spirit Communications strives to offer the very best value for its customers. Providing excellent value requires highly efficient operations with low costs that are passed on to customers. To minimize long distance expenses, Spirit Communications has also deployed the NexOSS intelligent call routing solution from TransNexus. This dynamic routing solution enables Spirit Communications to route calls based on the lowest cost, best quality and jurisdiction. NexOSS includes no-loss dynamic least cost routing that supports up to 100,000,000 translations, as well as routing by Quality of Service, time of day, day of week, and customer specific routing.

NexOSS integrates with Spirit’s Metaswitch Call Feature Server (CFS) for routing calls to both the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and to SIP networks. According to Price, “NexOSS is an excellent value. It is a feature rich routing solution with a very rapid return on investment. In addition, the technical support from TransNexus is always very responsive. We have been very happy with TransNexus as a new vendor.”

Summary

Spirit Communications has been on the cutting edge of telecommunications technology for over twenty years. By continuously working to improve their network with innovative supporting software like TransNexus’ SDReporter and NexOSS solutions, Spirit is able to offer their customers the highest quality service.