As more and more telecoms transition their telephony networks to an all IP-based infrastructure, the need for standardization has become ever more apparent. As the situation exists today, while several ITSPs have partially or completely switched over to voice over IP communication, interconnection between service providers often still occurs over the public switch telephone networks (PSTN), which impacts both the cost and performance of voice communication.
To bridge this gap, many service providers have turned to IP-based SIP interconnection, using session border controllers (SBCs) to negotiate protocol at the network’s edge. However, these connections can currently only established on an individual, carrier-by-carrier basis. Moreover, there is no commonly-agreed upon methodology for translating phone numbers into SIP-IP routing data.
So, if we are to truly embrace an all-IP communications world, there must be a standardized method of service provider interconnection. That is exactly what the SIP Forum (News - Alert), partnering with ATIS, hopes to achieve in its new Joint Task Force announced this month.
“As standardized, IP-based interconnection becomes the norm, it brings with it opportunities to eliminate unnecessary costs and enable advanced services,” said ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller (News - Alert). “The output of this Joint Task Force will provide a detailed protocol specification that all North American service providers can support and implement. It will be an important step toward making SIP/IMS interconnection ‘plug-and-play.’”
The ultimate goal is to fully specify an IP communications network-to-network interface (NNI) between North American service providers.
The SIP Forum is an IP communications industry association that works to promote and advance SIP-based technology, including standardization, interoperability, and best practices. The Alliance for Telecommunications Solutions (ATIS (News - Alert)), meanwhile, is an information and communications technology industry cooperative working to advance the industry’s most-pressing business priorities. Members of both groups are being invited to participate in the new joint task force, which will examine the current state of SIP-IP interconnection and propose detailed, protocol-level recommendations for standard specification.
According to the task force, a fully-specified NNI will detail all required options and spell out an agreed-upon mechanism for negotiating extensions to the protocol.
“The communications industry has an outstanding record of making seamless technology transitions. North American carriers continue to invest in upgrading their networks at an unprecedented pace,” said SIP Forum Chairman Richard Shockey (News - Alert). “The SIP Forum and ATIS are committed to a multi-stakeholder, consensus-driven process among our members to achieve ubiquitous interoperability of these systems. The goal is better, faster and less expensive network operation and new service creation.”
In the end, the new task force hopes that IP-NNI standardization will support wide-scale availability of IP-based voice services, “laying the groundwork for ubiquitous advanced real-time communications such as high-definition voice, point-to-point video calling, and multimedia text across wireless, wireline and cable providers.”
Edited by Alisen Downey