Rogers, Telus join international forum to shift traditional voice to IP

Rogers and Telus are taking part in international discussions about the move away from traditional telephony and the global race to replace toward IP voice systems. The International IP Interconnection (i3) Forum—a global group of IP service providers—hosted a two-day technical workshop in Warsaw, Poland, in June. Its purpose: to coordinate the global transition from traditional voice communication technology—largely what we call time-division multiplexing (TDM) technology—to Internet protocol (IP) telephony. The forum covered signalling, operational and quality of service issues, among others. It involved industry organizations such as the GSMA (representing the international mobile industry), technology-standards organizations, and service and technology vendors. Two Canadian service providers, Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp., which use VoIP technology, have joined the i3 Forum. Fara Kapadia, international director for Rogers Business Solutions, helped organize the Warsaw workshop, and said the event enabled carriers around the world to get a closer view of IP voice interconnectivity. “The international voice business is a bit complex, to put it mildly,” she said. “IP is a very data-centric protocol. It was created with data in mind. When you layer on voice, it adds levels of complexity. Part of what we’re trying to do is bring to light some of these complexities and what we need to ... move away from our legacy TDM equipment and start adopting the IP world.” The workshop included IP voice technology vendors such as Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Nokia Siemens Networks BV, and ZTE Corp., which heard what carriers need to move to IP. Rogers joined the i3 Forum, which launched in 2007, in 2008. “We’ve adopted IP in our local footprint,” Kapadia said. “It was almost a natural evolution for us to start getting our national network over IP and then our international network over IP ... We could see the benefit of trying to do things collaboratively, versus on our own.” Rogers’ national and international network transitions are coming along, she added. “We have a mix,” Kapadia said. “Last year, we turned up our international gateway on an IP enabled platform, and we’re working our way through systematically.” Kapadia said that, on a local and domestic level, Canada is not necessarily a leader, but the country is not behind. She added: “Many of the European carriers are very much ahead. In fact, many of them have publicly announced that they have no more TDM left in their networks.” Robert Guimont, a marketing director with Telus, said the company didn’t send a representative to the i3 Forum’s Warsaw meeting, but said Telus has adopted many of the recommendations proposed by the i3 Forum. “The adoption of IP as proposed by the i3 Forum continues to gain momentum as demonstrated by the dramatic growth in i3 Forum membership over the last three years,” he said via email, adding that Telus was the first Canadian carrier to implement an IP backbone to provide retail and wholesale phone services. “I expect Canadian service providers to continue to evolve their IP capability to ensure compatibility with the global market.” Brownlee Thomas, a principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Montreal, said Canada’s IP adoption rate mirrors that of its southern neighbour. “Canada would be right in line with the Americans. The first thing you do is put IP into your core ... Then you start pushing it out to the edge.” But Canadian carriers may have completed their core network transition faster than their American counterparts. TDM equipment has been more expensive in Canada due to economies of scale, she said. In order to decrease costs, Canadian service providers moved early to implement less expensive IP core networking technology. Still, Canada lags behind the U.K. and Europe, where carriers need robust IP networks to support burgeoning mobile voice and data services. “Wireless is really what makes all the revenues,” Thomas said. “For the Europeans, it’s more critical ... All the backhaul for wireless is IP.” While as much as 90 per cent of Canada’s international voice trunks are IP-enabled, it could take a few more years for all industrialized nations to completely switch to IP. “Forrester’s view has always been that that would take until 2017 to 2020 before you had effectively replaced ,” Thomas said. It would be a mistake to think that all IP implementations are the same, analysts add. Communication service providers often use different iterations of IP technology, making global interconnectivity a challenge. Groups like the i3 Forum are trying to help carriers develop ways to link disparate IP networks. “Roundtable discussions like the i3 Forum give industry decision-makers an ideal opportunity to identify and work through any number of little details that would otherwise be missed,” said Carmi Levy, an independent technology analyst in London, Ont. Forums have long been used to hammer out the technical details of communication, he pointed out. “At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union used a telephone-based hotline to allow leaders quick access to each other in the event of rising tensions,” Levy said. “Despite the fact that this admittedly simple network was based on nothing more complex than a near-universal standard dial-up line, the two countries still met regularly to ensure the processes surrounding the technology’s use were understood and constantly updated.” Canadian telcos BCE Inc. and MTS Allstream have promoted the notion that they implemented IP technology early, but neither company is a member of the i3 Forum. Thomas said it’s no surprise that Rogers and Telus are i3 Forum members, given their histories. Don’t forget Entwistle came from Cable & Wireless,” she said. “Rogers was Sprint Canada.” Cable & Wireless and Sprint were two of the earliest companies to embrace the underpinning technology for IP core networking. news@thewirereport.ca -- CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed comments to Telus official Kristen Massaro. The comments were from Robert Guimont, marketing director with the company.

Rogers, Telus join international forum to shift traditional voice to IP

News | July 8, 2010

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us