Electro/Telecom Industry Trends
ETSI Announces Project TIPHON Release 3 Harmonizing IP Telephony and Circuit-Switched Telephony
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European Telecommunications Standards Institute's (ETSI) Project Telecommunications and Internet Protocol (IP) Harmonization over Networks (EP TIPHON) has announced the release of a major standards package. The new "TIPHON Release 3" standards package was approved at the EP TIPHON meeting held in November 2001 at the headquarters of ETSI in Sophia Antipolis, France.
EP TIPHON is addressing the challenges of the interoperability of IP telephony systems with Switched Circuit Networks, such as Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), and Signaling System 7 (SS7). It is working on plans to permit network operators to implement guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) levels, and new billing models for operators. TIPHON is also looking at issues related to numbering and addressing which become far more challenging as traditional telephone numbers have to interoperate with IP addresses and other Internet conventions like electronic mail aliases. Work is also being carried out to define security, call set up and signaling standards.
Current TIPHON standards are available in the following subject areas:
- Interoperability, Charging/Billing, Security
- Architecture
- Call Control Procedure, Information Flows and Protocols
- Naming, Numbering, and Addressing
- Quality of Service
- Verification and Demonstration
- Wireless and Mobility Aspects
This package of new standards (Release 3), profiles and test specifications will allow network operators and service providers, for the first time, to offer an integrated standards-based range of telephony services over multi-protocol packet- and circuit-switched networks. The TIPHON Release 3 implementations draw together popular industry protocols such as the ITU-H.323, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), MEGACO/H.248 and BICC, to enable services to be offered in a coherent way between multiple service providers and across transport networks utilizing differing technologies.
"Release 3 is a milestone for TIPHON and the telecommunications industry," commented Hans van der Veer of Lucent Technologies and Chairman of EP TIPHON. "As the convergence of voice and data drives the telecommunications industry to Next Generation Networks (NGN), TIPHON is in a unique position to leverage the protocol development work in other standards organizations, add missing pieces where needed, and fit it all together."
Release 3 is the latest and most comprehensive to date in a series of planned releases which, over time, will offer the means of providing a wide range of multimedia services extending well beyond those available on today's conventional networks. Release 3 defines mechanisms for the provision of an integrated range of basic telephony services over a mixture of IP, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), PSTN, ISDN and GSM Wireless transport networks. Mechanisms for providing guaranteed QoS levels on ATM or managed IP Networks are defined in the package, as well as best effort communication services over the public Internet.
An important aspect of the new Release 3 standards is that they are designed for use in a multi-vendor environment, and therefore functional roles, as well as technology interfaces, have been clearly defined. Security procedures are also featured prominently. The TIPHON Release 3 standards, however, do not constrain business models, as it is recognized that new services and new ways of offering service will emerge in the Next Generation Network (NGN) environment.
"The next step for TIPHON will be on multimedia communications," states Helmut Leopold, Managing Director at Telekom Austria. "That's a tough goal to achieve and will take another one to two years to complete. In the meantime Telekom Austria is very active at VISIONng, an association which deploys inter-domain services based on TIPHON Release 3 specifications."
"Lucent Technologies actively supports EP TIPHON's moves to facilitate and specify an NGN architecture capable of supporting IP-based Multimedia services that go beyond the current 'classic' Plain Old Telephone System (POTS)/ISDN services," adds Jaap Bood, Lucent's EMEA Vice President of Softswitch. "We need a new platform for new services, not just a means of replicating the existing ones."
Martine Lapierre, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Alcatel Carrier Networking Group, and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Softswitch Consortium, states:
"Alcatel strongly supports the ETSI TIPHON Project and will make further proposals within ETSI towards the IETF and ITU-T, in order to complete SIP and H.248 so that they cover NGN requirements. We believe that protocols such as H323, SIP, H248 and Bearer Independent Call Control (BICC) will co-exist for the foreseeable future. Profiling and complementing these communication standards to make sure that they will all work together is vital for the success of NGN deployment, and EP TIPHON is well positioned to support this interoperation."
"Cisco is delighted to be part of the ongoing ETSI Project TIPHON. True Next Generation Networks require open standards that are implemented consistently by both carriers and vendors," states Alistair Woodman, Director of Marketing, Voice Technology Center at Cisco Systems. "TIPHON Release 3 marks a significant step forward in specifying not just common standards, but how to implement them for true interoperability, accelerating the deployment of revenue-generating services."
Over recent years, ETSI has established a reputation as the world's primary standards body offering services for standards validation. The new TIPHON Release 3 makes use of this knowledge and experience.