Well, don't hold your breath! As you know, when it comes to technical inertia, telecom can't be beat. But we are seeing some movement, and it's called SIP trunking, with the new SIPconnect recommendation providing the catalyst.

      In 2004, Chris Gatch, Cbeyond Communications' CTO, pulled together folks from Avaya, Broadsoft, Centerpoint Technologies, Cisco, and Mitel to form the SIPconnect initiative. Their objective was to improve the interoperability between SIP-based premises systems and SIP-enabled service providers so that business systems could place and accept calls to and from the PSTN without enterprise gateways.

With SIP trunking, all parties benefit.

• Gateway costs go away for the enterprise.
• Without unnecessary analog-digital conversions, call quality goes up.
• Direct SIP signaling supports greater function.
• Power and footprint are reduced.

     The recommendation, which you can download from www.sipforum.org, points out that all of the necessary IETF RFCs needed for SIP trunking already exist, but the "sheer number of these standards documents, service providers, and equipment manufacturers have no clear 'master reference' that outlines which standards they must specifically support in order to ensure success." SIPconnect solves the problem by providing a clear framework of MUSTs, SHALLs, and MAYs. It provides a reference architecture by addressing protocols, messages, codec support, packetization, fax and modem handling, DTMF handling, NAT, and authorization and security by referencing the appropriate RFCs.

     And it's gaining traction. Cbeyond has been joined by (we believe, as some of these vendors don't have information on their support for SIPconnect on their Websites) 360 Networks, Bandtel, Bandwidth.com (it's all over their Website), IP-Only, Level3, and Voex on the carrier side. And at least 15 IP PBX vendors are supporting the recommendation including Altigen, Allworx, Avaya, Digium, Epygi, Fonality, Guardian, Linksys, ShoreTel, SwitchVox, Talkswitch, and Telechoice.

     Oh! And Commetrex. We're adding SIPconnect support to BladeWare. It will be available in early Q3.

     I spoke with Chris Gatch, Cbeyond CTO and SIP Forum Board Member about the effect SIPconnect was having on SIP trunking. He said, "The SIP Forum is pleased with the rate of industry adoption of SIPconnect. Given the number of PBXs and service providers that now support the standard, it's apparent this initiative is having a positive impact on the industry and driving SIP-trunking implementations."

     In the interest of disclosure, Cbeyond has been Commetrex' service provider for over five years, and we are currently installing SIPconnect for a new IP PBX. Also, Cbeyond's fax-to-email service is based on 14 servers continuously running BladeWare Fax-to-Email. Cbeyond's SIPconnect includes a bunch of SIPconnect trunks and DIDs, so what we don't need for basic voice and fax we'll use for testing SIPconnect on BladeWare, our HMP media sever. If you're an OEM, you will be able to use BladeWare as the foundation of your media server or IP PBX, and it will give you a SIPconnect interop-proven value-adding platform.

     There is little on the Cbeyond Website about SIP trunking and SIPconnect, but you can learn more about their free half-day VAR SIPconnect training course which is based on Cbeyond's over two years of experience with the recommendation. The course addresses issues like LAN configuration and firewalls in a SIP-trunking environment. To sign up for the course (and learn more about Cbeyond), send an email to sales.engineers@cbeyond.net.

     The recommendation is available for download from the SIP Forum at http://www.sipforum.org/sipconnect. In addition, the Bandwidth.com Website is loaded with useful information and so is the BandTel site. VoEX has some interesting white papers. Check them out.

     Also, as possibly the only hosted-solutions vendor to the IP service provider to have announced SIPconnect support, Broadsoft deserves special mention. Announced at Spring VON 2007, Broadworks Business Trunking release 14, with SIPconnect support, is now generally available.

     So, if you are an OEM developing a media server or IP PBX, consider beginning with BladeWare, a SIPconnect-proven platform. If you're an IP service provider to the SME, ask your system integrator for SIPconnect support. If you're an enterprise, ask your service provider and PBX vendor for SIPconnect support and skip the investment in gateways. Oh, yes. Even though BladeWare handles G.711 pass-through faxes just fine, all cases ask for T.38 support to be included.