Border Services Solutions

At this point, pretty much everyone in IP communications knows that the only way to deliver digital voice and video services … and stay in business … is to have the best Quality of Service (QoS) in place as possible. But because digital voice and video signals almost always have to travel over multiple (and disparate) networks – which are not necessarily owned or operated by the service provider – how does one establish a set of methodologies for guaranteeing acceptable QoS which all parties can agree on?

Simple: Get all of the service providers, equipment makers, platform developers and network operators together to come up with “standards” or “best practices” which the industry can adopt.

In an effort to better define - and promote the adoption of - best practices in Voice and Video over IP services and products, a group of leading vendors, including Ditech Networks, Empirix, Global IP Sound, JDSU, Polycom and Telchemy, have formed the V2oIP Quality Alliance (News - Alert).

By combining the expertise of key technology providers, service providers and industry experts, the alliance not only aims to delineate industry best practices, but also to help educate the market about relevant technologies, standards, and deployment methods.

“One of the most important areas of voice and video over IP is quality”, said Paul Waadevig, industry manager for Frost & Sullivan’s Conferencing & Collaboration practice, in a press release “We believe that a proactive, cooperative industry effort focused on understanding, measuring and improving quality will accelerate development and deployment of high-quality IP voice and video solutions and services, while helping avoid some of the pitfalls that are commonly encountered with wide adoption of emerging technologies.”

The alliance will serve as a single source of qualified information and expertise, as well as the ability to collaborate on new solutions and provide feedback on digital voice and video development efforts. Comprised of a diverse range of solution vendors, service providers, system integrators, and forward-looking enterprises, it will help define requirements for network readiness, pre-deployment testing, in-service monitoring and troubleshooting, SLA definition and monitoring, and technologies for mitigating problems and enhancing voice quality.

Anyone interested in joining the alliance should contact Joel Fisher, director of strategic marketing for Ditech Networks (News - Alert), at [email protected], or (650) 623-1356.

For more information, visit www.v2oipqualityalliance.org.

Ditech Networks is spearheading the effort to establish the alliance. The company made news last week when it announced a new partnership with MetaSwitch, a provider of IMS switching and applications solutions. The deal will enable MetaSwitch to sell Ditech’s C100 Session Border Controller for seamless scalability and security to its broadband customers. The partnership will offer service providers end-to-end VOBB solutions and allow Ditech to bring their VoIP products to VoIP carrier networks.

For more information about Ditech Networks, visit www.ditechnetworks.com.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.