Canadian wholesale service provider moves into Kenyan market

Iristel offers local phone number coverage to OTTs and voice service providers

Iristel, an international telecoms service provider headquartered in Canada, is to expand into Kenya, its first African market. This is part of its wider strategy to enter “emerging markets”.

Iristel’s voice service offers a facilities-based local phone number coverage and inbound voice origination service that enables over-the-top (OTT) and voice service providers to offer voice and messaging services to businesses or consumers.

Aggregation

The wholesale service aggregates calls to phone numbers managed by Iristel and hands them off to single or multiple customers’ IP addresses. Iristel’s customers can use this service to deploy primary line voice services to consumers, to offer cheaper toll-free numbers using local numbers that also provide a local touch, or to create new mobile or OTT-based applications for consumers.

Iristel claims to offer service providers almost total local service reach, network scale and routing flexibility. It will initially offer its wholesale services then expand its product offering over the coming months in Kenya, enabling customers to purchase session initiation protocol (SIP) trunks, which can be aggregated with the company’s on-net footprint, and numbers for direct inward dialling (DID).