Telecom Lead India: Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, TeliaSonera and Vodafone will conduct pilots of voice over IP eXchange (IPX) in 2013.
The pilots are part of a new initiative announced by the GSMA and i3forum to accelerate the take up of IPX based interconnect through live commercial pilots for voice traffic.
GSMA says that the use of IPX creates the future pathway for interoperable voice services based on IP networks, such as Voice over LTE (VoLTE), and also provides an alternative to today’s current best-effort IP interworking.
The pilots will pave the way for the technical and commercial agreements necessary to use IPX to interconnect any voice services. The key end result of these pilots will be the effective migration of live voice traffic to IP-based interconnect or using IPX as the interconnect for new voice services.
The new initiative is also expected to prompt global telecom operators to provide more IPX offerings from carriers and encourage IPX providers to expand their footprint and establish more interconnections with network operators.
Alex Sinclair, chief technology officer, GSMA, said: “By providing global interoperability, this initiative will help to drive the widespread deployment of services such as VoLTE, with the same quality of service that consumers have come to expect.”
IPX, an interconnect platform offered by carriers on a competitive basis, is to be used to provide a global, private, secure IP network that supports end-to-end quality of service.
IPX delivers an end-to-end managed network solution that offers openness, focuses on quality and provides an efficient multi-service connectivity regime, with the principle of one contract and one single network interface providing many connections and multi-service end-to-end relationships.
