Thursday, October 21, 2010

AT&T lays out SIP peering architecture

AT&T now is talking about its architecture and business plans for its SIP peering exchanges. While a company spokesperson wouldn’t discuss how far along the company was in discussions with other tier-one carriers, HD Voice News believes AT&T is much further along than the firm has indicated in public.

The peering capability is potentially important because it represents a chance to create new revenue and business relationships between carriers using the exchanges.

Some think that "peering" necessarily means "settlement-free" peering, but that is not always the case. For tier-one carriers, peering replaces the existing interconnection methods and possibly could enable new business relationships.

Among the obvious potential changes are "settlement-free" arrangements between some carriers with equivalent originating and terminating traffic, as well as "transit" style arrangements for carriers with smaller amounts of terminating traffic.

The SIP exchanges would enable high-definition and multimedia services as well. Aside from new revenue opportunities created by the ability to interconnect end-to-end IP services, the exchanges should reduce the costs of interconnection.

Smaller carriers will note the use of an "IP" interconnection business model. Big carriers will peer, possibly on a settlement-free basis, while smaller carriers might pay the equivalent of IP transit fees to interconnect.

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