SIP Forum looks to accelerate interoperability of SIP trunking specs

A recent study said that while SIP trunking has seen steady adoption over the past five years, interoperability issues and a lack of standardization have limited its overall adoption and hamstrung service providers from gaining deeper market penetration.

But a new technical initiative from the SIP Forum--SIPconnect-IT--aims to speed up vendor and service provider interoperability with the SIPconnect 1.1 Technical Specification, ratified by the SIP Forum earlier this year.

A series of testing events will help provide application developers, equipment vendors and operators with a platform from which to demonstrate and test implementations of the specification in real-world scenarios.

The first SIPconnect-IT testing event is planned for mid-2012 in Louisville, Colo., and will be hosted by CableLabs.

The ratification of the SIPconnect 1.1 technical recommendation earlier this year was seen as a significant step toward the adoption of a common interoperability specification between SIP-enabled IP-PBXs and service provider networks. It provides a framework for direct IP peering between SIP-enabled enterprises and service provider networks, ensuring the interoperability of network elements across the IP environment and providing best-practices guidelines for vendors and service providers as they develop new equipment and IP applications for deployment.

"SIPconnect-IT represents the next step and is designed to transform these specs into action and to ensure IP applications and infrastructure utilizing the SIPconnect 1.1 guidelines can be implemented in live telecom environments," said Marc Robins, SIP Forum president and managing director.

For more:
- see this release

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