IP Telephony Comes of Age in Boston at Fall VoN 2003
by Lee Goldberg
Greetings from Boston, where history, technology, and some of the nation's worst traffic jams add their own special cachet to the big doings at VoN '03. One part trade show, one part high school science fair, and one part fraternity party, Jeff Pulver's VoIP-fest is one of the few bright lights in the otherwise gloomy electronics conference season. Part of the reason it's hard to be anything but optimistic at VoN is Pulver himself, and his tight cadre of family and friends that exude an almost evangelistic fervor about a future where a single phone number will follow you from place to place, allowing you to be in constant touch with your friends and associates around the world for a penny or two a minute. The future they imagine is a work in progress, paved by SIP phones, private VoIP networks, and a new generation of IP-based voice services rising from the ranks of the cable, DSL and wireless data providers.
Drinking The Kool-Aid
But if this fantastic vision seems to be the product of some sort of fanatic cult, the Kool-Aid is not too hard to swallow. VoIP technology and the standards that support it have matured significantly in the last few years. While it is still having its growing pains, the SIP protocol seems to be maturing rapidly and taking the of the earlier MCCP/Megaco protocol place as the primary bridging protocol between private and public networks. William Flanagan, VP of Product Management at SentitO Networks explained, "SIP is more even-handed in standards interoperability than Megaco. It also offers much better plug-and-play capabilities -- even though some issues with revenue control still exist."
Flanagan speculated that once-dominant MGCP/Megaco protocol would still play an important role in the GR-303 trunking standard space, while SIP might be the new SS7, the inter-carrier protocol currently used to route and control traffic across large networks. "It may become the de facto SS8, acting as a replacement for SS7 as carriers begin to adopt IP-based transport infrastructures" he added.
A Tough Childhood
Of course, the road to a SIP-topian future has had its rough patches. Many companies who rode the initial surge of IP-mania in the late 90s were caught in a triple play which stunted or killed all but the hardiest of the species during the nuclear winter of 2000 - 2001. In quick succession the IP pioneers were hit with the flight of venture capital from the tech sector, the collapse of the broadband (mainly DSL) boom and its associated competitive LECs, and a recession-induced hiatus in capital expenditures by the major carriers. The companies which did survive have emerged into a much brighter future, as interest in IP telephony grows in nearly every part of the world.
Once limited to hard-core computer enthusiasts and voice services in enterprise environments, VoN technologies are finding market traction with carriers -- especially in countries like Japan and Korea where broadband carriers reach half or more of the population. China, too, is rolling out IP-based backbone networks in many of its green-field build outs. Europe, and especially the US, whose billions of dollars in existing SONET/SDH/TDM-oriented capital equipment have caused them to be relatively slow to jump on the VoIP bandwagon, are beginning to take the technology seriously. This is in part due to the significant potential cost savings that can be realized from an IP-based infrastructure, but also as a reaction to the aggressive maneuvering of cable operators as they prepare to roll out IP telephony to boost their revenue stream. This is in good part why VoN is under serious consideration to become the backhaul network of choice for many emerging 3G cellular services.
But price is only part of the equation. Much of IP telephony's appeal is in the flexibility and versatility that allows it to do what POTS services can only dream of. Enterprise customers are already able to take their SIP phones with them on the road and use them as extensions of their IP-PBX wherever they can jack into the Internet. IP-based voice/e-mail interchange services, voice recognition, sophisticated multimedia conferencing services are all springing up using inexpensive, quick-configuring media servers instead of the cumbersome, capital-intensive Intelligent Network (IN) nodes traditionally used by the large carriers. Verizon, for example, is already quietly test-marketing third-party IP-Centrex services in the Chicago area. Thanks to a few drinks at Pulver's after-hours party, my source was also able to confirm that the tests are going so well that Verizon will probably begin to roll out IP-Centrex services nation-wide some time in 2004.
The Challenges Ahead
Even with their objective in sight clear sight, VoN and SIP technologies still face some major challenges in bridging the gap between today's realities and Pulver's vision of a seamless all-IP future. While the protocols, standards, and technologies have made great progress in the last few years, they still don't deliver the seamless connectivity and interoperability that traditional services do.
Jorgen Bjorkner, VP of concept development at Hotsip, explained that SIP domains are currently separate islands with private addressing schema, that require bridges between each other, and to the PSTN. "For the industry to become truly viable, we need to migrate to a universally applied SIP address/URL from any SIP node, or and eventually, any phone," he said.
He added that the other big obstacle the industry faces is that true plug-and-play between equipment is not here yet. Bjorkner feels this is in large part because many players don't yet quite adhere fully to the standards that are out there, and that the codecs most commonly used today were really not designed with IP telephony in mind. His hope is that many these problems will be solved as manufacturers verify the designs of their second-generation equipment by using a SIP test tool that simulates multi proxy hops and other semi-real-world test scenarios.
A SIP Sandbox
While some interoperability issues will have to wait for resolution by the IETF, ETSI, and other standards bodies, many of the nuts-and-bolts problems are being worked in real-time at VoN. One of the show's most interesting attractions is the VoN-Net, an IP-telephony breadboard environment where hardware and software vendors can hop on and verify they can interoperate with everyone else in the network.
The back of the hall was lined with rows of tables, stacked high with SIP servers, IP Voice gateways, and SIP phones of every description (See Fig. 1.) Clusters of harried-looking engineers hovered over their products, working out the last little kinks in their network interfaces, or placing calls to other vendors' equipment to make sure they could work together.
This open plug-fest gave vendors a rare chance to verify interoperability and wring out the remaining bugs under near-real-world conditions. It also gave attendees a chance to gain a first hand look at the products and technologies that will most likely reshape the way we communicate during the next decade. For example, it was not unusual to see a pair of phone vendors placing calls to each other via someone else's IP-PBX. Video phones of all flavors (see Fig. 2) practiced shaking hands across different conferencing software while engineers tweaked the operation of their WiFi (802.11)-powered wireless handsets.
Developed by Pulver Innovations, the wireless WiSIP phones use Wi-Fi technology to access SIP-based telephony services. Besides making a pretty nifty cordless phone around the home, a Wi-Fi-based SIP phone can also be used to make IP phone calls across almost any Wi-Fi network it has access to. They join several other gadgets that Pulver's team has designed to help speed the rollout of SIP phone services. The sleek handsets were on display at VoN, where hundreds of people were able to place calls over them. Expected retail price for the WiSIP phone is around $249.
Herding Cats
The activity and products at VoN are clear signs that VoIP is showing much more promise than it did even six months ago. Despite the gathering momentum, it still faces challenges in ensuring interoperability, providing economically feasible solutions for co-existence with the current PSTN infrastructure, and developing business models that will help it gain widespread acceptance.
The heated debates about how to meet these challenges were put on hold temporarily on Wednesday for the all-event party hosted by the VoN staff at one of Boston's hippest night clubs. As is the custom at Pulver events the entertainment was provided by "Herding Cats," an energetic rock-and-roll cover band that records on Pulver's own "Rev Up Records" label. Despite the fact that most of the crowd had put in a couple of 12-hour days beforehand the band managed to get most everyone out on the dance floor.
Standing calmly in the midst of the mayhem stood Jeff Pulver, smiling
quietly and enjoying the scene he helped create.
Questions? Comments? Write me at: lgoldberg@green-electronics.com.