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.

At its November 5th plenary, the Canadian ICT Standards Advisory Committee approved the recommendations of the Canadian IPv6 Task Group set up by Isacc in April. The 50 members of the Task Group were invited to individually produce a list of seven recommendations. Received inputs were collated, debated, ranked and ultimately distilled down to a pair of quite straightforward recommendations for immediate action: mandate support of IPv6 in Federal Government ICT procurements and set up a IPv6 Centre of Excellence with the help of Government, Industry and the Research and Education Community.

Later in the month, the Canadian approach was also presented at the 4th African IPv6 Summit held in conjunction with the Afrinic Conference in Dakar, Senegal and generated a lot of interest and discussion.

A participant commented on the Centre of Excellence approach as well as the African continent wide IPv6 training initiatives by Afrinic and the IPv6 information sites such as RIPE’s recently announced IPv6actnow. What was missing, she said, was a group of ‘Médecins IPv6 sans Frontières’ to help write or review the IPv6 requirements when government entities or private sector companies prepare or update calls for tender for ICT equipment or services and eventually to help evaluate the responses. Even the best IPv6 website and IPv6 training does not fill this void. To rely on current equipment suppliers has drawbacks and their often expensive professional services to help with a network audit and recommendations are hard to justify. Consequently IPv6 requirements are too often put on the backburner.

This reminded me of a coffee break comment by a participant at the Ottawa plenary in early November: He felt the need for his company to go forward with IPv6 but they were not sure what to put in their tender document while their service provider told them that there was not really that much urgency or need to hurry.

IPv6 Medics without Borders could indeed be a useful component of the Canadian IPv6 Centre of Excellence.

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous jump into the next decade.

This post originally appeared on CircleID.

The majority of VoIP implementations are currently based on one of two protocols, SIP and H.323. While H.323 was developed by engineers used to working in the TDM world, SIP originated among engineers whose primary experience was Internet-based, and their divergent sources are still reflected in their approach to VoIP.

H.323 is a more stringent protocol, which simplifies the interconnection process (though integrating equipment from multiple vendors generally required some integration work). However, its rigidity limits its extensibility – for instance, call forwarding and conference calling are not addressed within the H.323 protocol.

SIP is significantly less standardized than H.323, with many areas open to interpretation. As a result, plug-and-play integrations in multi-vendor environments remain elusive – a challenge that session controllers have only partially addressed.

However, SIP offers a significant advantage in delivering the integrated services that are an important part of the future business model for retail service providers, and as a result, we’re seeing a strong trend toward SIP.

In a SIP environment, where retail providers are taking advantage of extensibility to roll out unique and value-added integrated services, wholesale providers will need to have the expertise and flexibility to support the evolution of these advanced services.

Broadband is expected to grow 1,000 times in seven years. However, with such dramatic growth comes foreseeable challenges. So what does this really mean?

On the intercontinental side this means a new wave of investments in undersea cable capacity. This year will culminate with the activation of 16 new major cables, one more than the previous record set in 2001. The major difference this time around however, is that most major new systems cater to emerging markets in Asia and Africa.

From a global perspective, the major challenges are mostly restrictive access to cable landing stations and prohibitive backhaul and interconnect costs.

In terms of emerging countries, the challenge resides in the lack of national and cross-border fiber infrastructure, although the situation is gradually improving. These emerging economies represent huge potential with young populations who have growing purchasing power. Therefore, the obstacle will be to keep the network and associated investments on par with the anticipated traffic explosion, itself proportional to the affordability of smarter handsets and the price levels of telecommunication services and applications.

An ongoing challenge for regulators everywhere will be to ensure a level playing field and open markets while avoiding digital divides within the country.

Broadband is an increasingly integral part of the economy. It generates increased efficiency, productivity and contributes to job creation and occupational change. As such, looking at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, in 2008, telecom represented US $1.2 trillion or 3% of the GDP.

Broadband has transformed traditional business models in industry segments across the board. Take the service sector, for example. Many aspects of producing, delivering, consuming and coordinating are taking place over broadband networks. On an individual level, the average citizen has never been so dependent on having a constantly available online presence as they are today.
Broadband is also increasingly important as an enabling technology for structural changes in the economy, most notably in terms of globalization. Facilitating globalization of many services, broadband has a fundamental impact on the global allocation of resources, business efficiency and productivity.
Competitiveness in a global economy is unthinkable without global communications where remote offices enjoy equal access to corporate information technology services. The industries of outsourcing services and customer support depend on globally available, secure telecommunications services of the highest quality – essentially broadband. These demands can only continue to grow as we evolve to a global knowledge and service-based economy.