KPN subsidiary iBasis and TI Sparkle, the international services arm of Telecom Italia Group have turned up a multiservice IPX peering connection.  The new interconnection will support the exchange of multiple media types, including voice, signaling and GRX traffic generated by and destined for network operators connected to each carrier’s IPX and ensure end-to-end quality of service.

Telecom Italia announced its mobile HD voice plunge last year while iBasis has steadily touted the ability of its IPX service to provide HD voice and LTE roaming/signaling services between carriers.  Together as peers, this is a big deal, since it enables all the carriers using iBasis and Telecom Italia IPX services to seamlessly exchange HD voice and LTE traffic.

Sprint (www.sprint.com) has sent out a flurry of announcements this morning trumpeting the arrival of the HTC EVO 4G LTE phone at its stories around the country, including Northern California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Miami, FL and the Washington D.C. area.  The press releases all include a reference to “future HD Voice capabilities (1).”

The (1) footnote includes the now-obligatory definition of what Sprint defines it as: “HD Voice Capability: Requires a call between two HD Voice capable handsets on an HD Voice capable Sprint network. Sprint plans on deploying HD Voice networks in the future as part of its Network Vision upgrades.“

Sprint seems to be determined to generate sales of the phone, but most – if not all – of the areas where the press releases are targeted do not have a date certain for availability of either LTE or the 3G CDMA 1X Advanced HD voice service.  The mobile carrier has only committed to turning up LTE and 1X Advanced in mid-2012 to Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston,Kansas City and San Antonio.

One conclusion might be Sprint wants to move a lot of HTC EVO 4G LTE phones, regardless of when they actually turn up LTE/1X Advanced service.  A different one might be that the company plans to turn up service to those areas more quickly than it has publicly announced.

At CTIA’s show this week, Leap Wireless was underlining its commitment to CDMA 1X Advanced technology.  The company plans to have the HD voice-enabling tech in all of its new phones, with a bunch of 1X Advanced models coming out in the second half of 2012. But no word if it will use the CDMA upgrade to provide HD voice service.

Offering pre-paid service through its Cricket subsidiary, Leap initially announced its commitment to incorporating 1X Advanced in January.  The Huawei Mercury, introduced in January, is among the current crop of Cricket phones that incorporate 1X Advanced technology.  More devices will be rolled out between July and October.

The big question is how Leap will use CDMA 1X Advanced. The technology along with Qualcomm’s EVRC-NW can be used to either deliver HD voice in the same RF bandwidth as a current CDMA narrowband call or used to refarm/repackage spectrum, delivering narrowband calls in about a third of existing spectrum usage.

In conjunction with CTIA this week, Sprint (www.sprint.com) will make the HTC EVO 4G LTE (HE4L) on May 18, with preorders started on May 7.  The phone will cost $199.99 with a new line of service, upgrade and two-year service agreement (before taxes).  It is now framing the phone for its “future HD voice capabilities.”

The announcement continues to emphasis on HD voice, but now with the caveat of “future” in front of it and some clarification at the bottom of the May 9 press release.     The footnote at the bottom of the release says–

(2)HD Voice Capability: Requires a call between two HD Voice capable handsets on an HD Voice capable Sprint network. Sprint plans on deploying HD Voice networks in the future as part of its Network Vision upgrades.

During its initial rollout of the HE4L, the company said 3G CDMA HD voice service would be available in “late 2012.”

Sprint is enabling HD voice with its Network Vision upgrade project.  Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and Can Antonio are expected to have 4G LTE and enhanced 3G service by the middle of 2012.

The Internet2 university network consortium has worked out a deal with Aastra and Level 3 Communications to provide managed voice services and SIP trunking to college campuses throughout the country.  Aastra says that its Clearspan hosted SIP calls will do HD voice by default with “no additional changes or charges,” so this could be one whopping big HD voice universe pretty quickly.

Texas A&M University and Tulane Universty are among the early adopters of services.  Internet2 boasts over 66 government agencies, laboratories and other institutions of higher learning, 35 regional and state research and education networks and more than 100 national research and education networking organizations.

For  higher education, this represents the best of both worlds.  Organizations that already have SIP and HD voice running in their LAN/WAN island – keep in mind many universities and colleges have satellite campuses already netted in via IP – can simply set up on whopping big SIP trunk to route outbound voice calls on either a per-minute or flat rate basis.  On-net SIP calls between Internet2 members can get routed separately depending on connects, so there’s money saved in inter-university calling.

If an institution decides it doesn’t want to be in the dedicated voice services field, it can subscribe to Aastra’s Clearspan UC services, which include vanilla voice, fixed-mobile convergence, IVR,  conferencing and call center applications.  Aastra needs a minimum starting order of 50, with an estimated average cost per line per month at around $6.78 before taxes, fees, and other government overhead for 1 to 20,000 lines, with scaling discounts moving from 20,000 upward.