Founded in 2007 and made public in 2008, the i3 Forum has grown from eight members to more than 37 carriers worldwide. Currently carrying 80% of the world’s international voice traffic in more than 100 countries, the i3 Forum is focused on making the transition to an all-IP world easier. Aside from a significant increase in membership, the i3 Forum has seen tremendous results in the past couple of years.

In addition to making pragmatic business, technology and operational recommendations for the benefit of the industry, the i3 Forum has delivered service definitions and SLA guidelines. The i3 Forum has developed interconnection models (private and public, including over the Internet) as well as recommendations on Signaling (SIP and SIP-I), Codecs, Security and QoS. In 2009, the i3 Forum completed early work with GSMA on Voice over IPX.

So what’s to come?

This year, the i3 Forum will focus more on voice. In particular, the i3 Forum will make more recommendations on Wideband and Low Bitrate Codecs. The i3 Forum is working with the SIP Forum on Fax over IP and it is expected to be delivered next September.

The i3 Forum is also developing a new suite of Training Programs on International IP Interconnection with Neotelis, a consultancy that assists telecommunications organizations worldwide.

The i3 Forum announced they will be hosting a two day workshop June 15-16 in Warsaw, Poland. As part of a series of initiatives, the i3 Forum will leverage its extensive industry knowledge to host the Technical Workshop in an effort to further address key issues currently impacting carriers.

In just two years, we’ve seen concrete progress to an all-IP future and the momentum is set to continue!

It is undeniable that we are moving towards an IP-enabled world. However, are we ready?

In short, yes. The industry and Tata Communications in particular is seeing that MNOs are increasingly relying on Application Service Providers such as Blackberry/RIM. Therefore the MNO are demanding high-quality, secured access interconnects into Application Service Providers to deliver such business critical applications which is what the IPX framework was developed for.

The cost efficiency aspect afforded by an IP-based delivery platform is demonstrative of the longevity of IPX. By having only one transport and interconnect technology for all services, MNOs can extend domestic services into the international market with much less overhead, resulting in CAPEX and OPEX efficiencies.

In addition to cost, the industry is also embracing IPX as the future-proof interconnect framework. When all mobile services migrate to LTE including Voice, MNOs will need a quality and secure transport network for all business critical applications.

Although not all MNOs are implementing IPX currently, the migration to an all IP world is bound to happen. And for those MNOs that provide ASP services to their subscribers and want to future proof their interconnection needs when migrating to LTE they will need a interconnect framework.

That framework is the “IPX.”

MNOs are starting to move towards IP communications with the introduction of Long Term Evolution (LTE). As we move further into LTE, MNOs increasingly require the right partner to enable the secure transport of voice, signaling and data services.

Increase Offerings
MNOs should look for a partner that will enable them to add service functionalities as this converged approach offers an efficient way to introduce new application and services to end users.

Leverage a Global Footprint
MNOs should select a partner that has a large global footprint. By doing so, MNOs will have fewer NNI interconnections, allowing them to ensure high-quality.

Access to Economies of Scale
In addition, MNOs can leverage the economies of scale to focus on their core areas of expertise, including building customer relationships, driving revenue from on-net terminations and enhancing value-added services.

MNOs need the right partners to address the challenges of migrating to an all IP world. By choosing the right partner, MNOs can fully benefit from an efficient and future-proof platform for convergence, IPX.

Africa has the fastest growing telecommunications industry. But what is driving this growth? A primary driver is undersea cable build outs.

When it comes to cost, cable capacity is significantly cheaper than satellite. This regional growth is also fueled by the demand for high-speed, low latency connectivity. While satellite connections have an average of 600 millisecond delay, cable capacity delivers voice and data communications in less than half the time.

The inherent negative aspects of satellite communications fueled the launch of the SEACOM cable system, the first undersea submarine cable system that connects the African continent to Europe, Asia and India. Through this build out, Tata Communications is able to cost-effectively and efficiently provide fully integrated network services from South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya to its networks in Europe, Asia and India.

The abundance of capacity leads to the creation of a whole new industry for high-speed connectivity from call centers to growing the Internet. To that end, from August 2009 to now, Tata Communications has doubled the entire IP connectivity in Kenya, going from #3 in terms of connectivity to the #1 position.

Parts of Africa already have many attractive elements in place, including an underemployed workforce, good language skills, low labor costs and good time zone locations with European- and Middle Eastern-based companies, which could be harnessed through the proliferation of more connectivity to the rest of the world to support Call Centre, software development, and other similar services.

So far, VoIP-based bilateral interconnects have followed traditional industry billing models of either bilateral agreements, or billing on an A-Z rate sheet. Most interconnections have been between incumbents or wholesale carriers seeking increased flexibility and incremental cost efficiencies in traffic exchange, not new ways to do business.

However, emerging interconnection models, including voice peering and IPX, offer much more potential to change traditional billing arrangements by increasing the number of operators for whom a bilateral connection becomes commercially interesting.

Many of these retail service providers, such as mobile operators or cable companies, are looking at ways that new pricing models could bring additional value to their offerings. Sister companies within a mobile group may consider foregoing settlement on traffic entirely, and providers may evaluate a wider variety of potential peering partners with whom they have roughly equal traffic flow – such as a cable company and mobile operator within the same market.

The result may be a significant evolution in the value proposition of wholesale carriers toward a transit-only model, and one as well where integration expertise, flexibility and the ability to enable smooth interworking between diverse environments becomes comparatively more critical.

The popularity of peering business models among carriers can be explained by a concept known as Metcalfe’s Law. Popularly attributed to Robert Metcalfe about Ethernet investments, Metcalfe’s Law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of users connected to it.

For carriers, Metcalfe’s Law suggests that each peering connection becomes an asset simply because it increases the number of users that can be reached. Within an IPX framework, dense interconnections will mean that providers offering new and innovative services will easily be able to reach a substantial audience of end users.

The network effect is particularly important for new technologies such as Telepresence, which require a large upfront investment from the end user. The more Telepresence users any one company can connect to, the more valuable their investment becomes and the faster they achieve ROI.

One of the promises of IPX is the ability to simplify and make more cost-efficient existing interconnection procedures by replacing them with a combination of public and private peering. As more potential peering relationships become commercially viable, carriers will be able to leverage the power of Metcalfe’s law to drive speedier service growth.

One of the crucial features of the pending IPX specification are the three proposed public peering points: in Asia, Europe and North America, where all IPX providers would connect and be able to peer, regardless of service type.

However, potential IPX participants have also articulated a strong value to maintaining existing interconnections, which may not happen to be located at the preferred peering points. For carriers with hundreds of bilateral connections already in place, many of which have already been migrated to IP, the costs associated would be significant.

As a result, the IPX specification now includes provisions for both public and private peering arrangements, depending upon the needs of the service providers involved. By introducing greater flexibility in the type of peering arrangements allowed, the specifications are designed now to speed the addition of reachable destinations, increasing the value of IPX as a whole.

In the wholesale environment, the majority of traffic is carrier-to-carrier. We manage today’s security challenges by learning from yesterday’s mistakes. Past issues have inspired us to create internal processes which ensure that our new customers join us in taking responsibility for network security.

Subnets owned by partners have raised security flags in the past. Now we have processes for carriers to assume responsibility for their subnets. Alternately, we work with the local ISP to ensure they assume responsibility.

As time goes on, more and more customers are insisting that we too demonstrate our commitment to responsibility in security. Many have their own standards they want us to meet or exceed. In addition, they want options in security, particularly those carriers who are involved with industry-wide security efforts like i3Forum.

Embracing evolution in responsibility for security on both sides of the table is an important part of today’s partnerships, and is the ultimate best practice in security.

The challenges MNOs face in moving to an all-IP network are similar to those traditional voice carriers face, but are compounded by the multiplicity of services requiring migration.

To satisfy demanding customers, MNOs need to be able to address roaming quality fears surrounding signaling and data roaming challenges around GRX. For example, MNOs need to manage their signaling relationship and assure their subscribers of quality of the same caliber abroad as they receive domestically. Because of MNOs’ roaming requirements, service migration issues, which also exist in the TDM space, are compounded and intensified in the move to IP.

The number of services MNOs offer make migration more difficult than for traditional voice carriers. A traditional carrier may simply take the interconnect they use for IP and move it over to voice. Now consider a mobile operator: in addition to voice, they must also address signaling services, SMS signaling services, and more.

Because moving over a number of services is much harder than moving one, wholesale carriers who can offer MNOs a comprehensive migration plan provide a valuable service. Indeed, in providing this service, wholesale carriers help MNOs maximize their cost savings, which come from migrating all services (not just voice) to the IP network.

The currents pushing the way toward an IP future pose several challenges to MNOs, both internally and with their bilateral partners.

First, MNOs must make the case internally for the move from TDM to IP. For well-established MNOs, especially in Europe and North America, the case is reducing operational cost, and optimizing the network, while in more dynamic markets, prioritizing against network build-outs may be at issue.

The next challenge is managing existing relationships, balancing both their TDM and IP interconnect partners. The emergence of IPX has been very helpful in addressing the relationship management challenge, because it gives all parties concrete terms and conditions with which to begin to work.

Lastly, MNOs have to address their concerns about the security and quality of IP networks. They fear that moving away from their closed international voice network might open it up to attack.

Add to this an awareness of some of the ways in which IP experiences delays that TDM does not (poling from North Pole to South Pole, for example) and you get the misperception that quality will suffer when you move to an IP network.

This is a new option for traffic networks, and there are still many challenges for MNOs to address and overcome.