Positive Signs For Interoperability Between VOIP Systems

It would appear that efforts to address problems of compatability and interoperability between the various VoIP protocols, packages and services are making some headway.

For users - and especially small businesses - the issue has been of growing concern as the popularity of VoIP has led to a huge increase in the number of VoIP services.

As Erica Stewart points out in her NetSquared blog, these potential users may want to adopt VoIP for their communication needs - but compatibility issues prevent them from fully entrusting their operations to such a service.

However, she goes on to say that developments have been made since Stefan Oberg, Skype's Vice-President for Business, announced the launch of a development program with Digium (the developers of Asterisk) last autumn.

The partnership aims to incorporate Skype with the Asterisk system in a way that will allow the Asterisk PBX handle Skype calls more clearly and efficiently.

Stewart says clients using this service now have the capability to make and receive Skype calls from within their existing Asterisk software and hardware systems.

She says the partnership between the two well-known VoIP providers points to the growing interoperability between the various VoIP systems.

"A small business owner can become more at ease in knowing that despite the multitude of both open source and proprietary voice codecs available in the market, there are efforts to be able to connect them to one another," she says.

"These moves towards partnerships and idea and technology sharing, only bodes well for the goal of interoperability between Voice over Internet Protocol systems."