The SIP Forum, an industry organization that promotes practical uses for the Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert), announced Wednesday its ratification of SIPconnect Technical Recommendation 1.0, after a unanimous vote by the Board of Directors.

 

SIPconnect represents a standards-based approach to direct peering between SIP-enabled IP PBXs and VoIP service provider networks. It specifies a reference architecture and defines protocols, features and rules necessary for seamless VoIP-to-PBX (News - Alert) interconnections.

 

The recommendation also eliminates the need for using a VoIP gateway because it details a method for tying enterprises to VoIP services with an end-to-end IP connection. This improves voice quality and results in a stable foundation for rich media services and personalized applications, the organization said.

 

Ratification of SIPconnect Technical Recommendation 1.0 came after peer review by both SIP Forum (News - Alert) members and members of the SIP community. This peer review demonstrated that the recommendation is stable and well-understood.

 

“I want to thank all of the participants in the SIPconnect Task Group for their selfless efforts and valuable time necessary to reach consensus and complete the ratification process,” said Richard Shockey (News - Alert), chair of SIP Forum’s Technical Working Group. “This was truly an industry-wide effort that we can continue to build on.”

 

Eric Burger, SIP Forum’s chairman of the board, added: “You can expect more work like this from the SIP Forum as we continue to grow our community and revitalize our Technical Working Group to tackle additional interoperability issues.”

 

Now that ratification of the 1.0 recommendation is complete, the SIP Forum announced formation of the SIPconnect 1.1 Task Group. This group will not create new standards (that being the work of standards bodies like the IETF) but rather to develop workable technical recommendations and profiles based on existing standards.

 

This Task Group will develop the next version of SIPconnect, and toward that end it is now accepting suggestions from the SIP community. Information about the initiative is available at www.sipforum.org.