A VoIP clearinghouse, however, is more than just a termination point. It is a service provider for other service providers, offering a mixed portfolio of termination, financial services, and enhanced applications. Many clearinghouses perform the following functions:

• a single point of contact for termination of telephony minutes worldwide
• a source for termination rates to specific destinations
• financial accounts management
• settlement of accounts between carriers
• credit risk assessment between carriers
• receivable processing between carriers (financial settlements)
• quality of service (QoS) monitoring and provisioning
• bandwidth and IP access provisioning
• value-added service offerings, including global roaming, messaging, and other enhanced applications

In addition to these clearinghouse roles, today’s VoIP clearinghouses also have the ability to exploit existing and future bilateral relationships with major carriers and wholesalers for large-scale exchange of telephony minutes over IP. These include wholesale minutes exchange of traffic taken directly from central-office (CO) switches using C7 integration and tandem switch hubbing over peered IP backbones or international private leased circuits (IPLCs). Taken together, bilateral minutes exchange and clearinghouse operations represent a major source of new revenue, cost savings, and infrastructure development for carriers worldwide.