The State of SIP Trunking - Good Morning ITEXPO!

By Juliana Kenny, TMCnet Web Editor

The ITEXPO (News - Alert) West 2010 opened this morning with an early session from the representatives from Ingate, SIP Forum, and Market Strategy and Analytics Partners discussing the “State of SIP Trunking” as it wrestles with new market challenges and interoperability.

Steve Johnson of Ingate noted that interoperability is a particularly pressing issue as “there are organizations such as the SIP Forum (News - Alert) looking to solve such problems, but realized end-to-end solutions for customers with multiple vendor and service provider solutions will continue to be an obstacle.” Johnson presented the latest developments and products from Ingate that have confirmed interoperability with many companies. Johnson announced that Ingate is “unified communications ready” jumping the gun on the perpetual issues SIP Trunking has always had with interoperability.

Johnson also provided a very helpful and detailed description of what SIP Trunking actually is for those who are budding experts, and to lay the foundation for the SIP Trunking Professional Development Program that is continuing throughout the day. In essence, SIP simply means moving your contract for voice from one carrier using a PSTN (public switch telephone network) to another carrier using SIP Trunking for voice and making phone calls.

Instead of going through various “ancient” connections, now your voice services travel from the service provider and the SIP trunks (this is where Ingate’s SIParator comes in) “to bring Internet connectivity to your company,” stated Johnson. “You unify your communications delivery so they are spread around your company; it’s simply a change in paradigm.”

Mark Robins, president and managing director of SIP Forum added to the discussion with a very basic idea. Essentially, you sign a contract, buy “X” number of SIP Trunks, which used to mean technically a bundle of wires that “actually looked like an elephant’s trunk, but now it’s a virtual number of sessions that are permitted by your carrier.”

Mark went on to emphasize the difficulty presented by interoperability for SIP providers, and discussed what SIPconnect brings to the table. Providing the gateway from the Enterprise VoIP premise to the VoIP Service Provider, SIPconnect uses a SIP proxy server that enables transparent feature transport and optimizes quality of service amongst other features.

The session launched the day’s SIP Forum, which includes dozens of other speaker sessions. Finishing up with a SIP TRUNK-UC Workshop for Service Providers on Wednesday, October 6, there is still time to catch all the exciting developments!

Juliana Kenny graduated from the University of Connecticut with a double degree in English and French. After managing a small company for two years, she joined TMC (News - Alert) as a Web Editor for TMCnet. Juliana currently focuses on the call center and CRM industries, but she also writes about cloud telephony and network gear including softswitches.

Edited by Juliana Kenny

(source: http://sip-trunking.tmcnet.com/topics/sip-trunking/articles/106441-state-sip-trunking-good-morning-itexpo.htm)