Neutral Tandem's (News - Alert) announcement of its HD voice interconnection service is welcome news for a variety of reasons. I think it will break the “dam” of progress for HD voice interconnection between carriers in fairly short order because it doesn't require much overhead and can be easily implemented by its current customer base.

By any benchmark, Neutral Tandem is the largest and most significant provider to date to officially announce HD voice interconnection; other people are doing it, but Neutral Tandem has over 100 carriers across the wireless, wireline, and cable space moving over 11 billion voice minutes a month through its network.

A lot of people have been talking about HD voice interconnection over the past two years, but there's been so much PR hot air and lack of follow-on detail that it's been difficult to take anyone's claims seriously.   Meanwhile, Tier 1 carriers have been quietly talking/working with SIP peering to enable HD voice and video, but they haven't formally announced services because it might tip the lucrative apple cart of intercarrier compensation with its complicated web of settlements.  

Neutral Tandem is a public company and it has 8x8 (News - Alert) – another public company with a solid reputation as a technology leader in the hosted VoIP business sector – as a customer. And 8x8 has the largest documented number of G.722 HD voice endpoints in North America; over 100,000 Aastra (News - Alert) and Polycom phones as of March 2011.

From an implementation perspective, Neutral Tandem has the easiest and simplest HD voice interconnection implementation.   A carrier connects via SIP trunking, leaving the SIP end-points to work out the negotiation if both sides allow connection via HD voice codecs. Establishing a call requires a SIP invite with a request for wideband as the top priority. If one side of the call doesn't have a SIP device, the call defaults to PSTN routing.

This approach doesn't require a server or off-site “dips” into a registry database and the associated per-call setup overhead plus the ongoing maintenance headaches associated with a third-party data base. It also does not require uploading of phone numbers to the interconnection provider – a key source of contention, since that list is viewed as intellectual property by carriers.

Current Neutral Tandem customers using SIP to exchange vanilla VoIP calls are pretty much good to go, since the routing tables are already there and they are set up to do SIP trunking. Plugging into Neutral Tandem's SIP network is straightfoward, with an 8 page test plan for certification to work through vendor interoperability issues, the variations in SIP protocols, and to establish routing.

According to Neutral Tandem, they have a “small number” of carriers today exchanging HD voice calls, with 8x8 being the first to go public.   The company is very bullish on the approach with an executive describing the business a “De facto IPX provider” since it has an IP core and can add on any number of service types today above and beyond HD voice, including video.

With the drive to HD voice on LTE (News - Alert) happening next year, the drive for more SIP-based interconnection is only going to strengthen Neutral Tandem's hand moving forward, as will cable's steady move to HD voice calling. I'm looking forward to discuss this more at IT EXPO West, where I'm moderating a panel on “Evolving Interconnection – From TDM to IP to IMS Peering” on September 14, at 3 PM. 

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.