VoIP Service Providers Becoming Communication Application Service Providers

There is some thing about owning core telecommunication networks throughout the world. And that is they general billions of dollars in profit for these companies because they charge interconnect fees for every call that needs to be connected.

However there is a new phenomenon going on called VoIP peering. This is where VoIP calls are passed directly between VoIP service providers and bypass completely the PSTN network. Because VoIP does not have to be hierarchical(unlike the PSTN) VoIP providers are free to create relationship between themselves or groups of providers:

But I see an even bigger benefit:

While VOIP peering will continue to interest carriers primarily as a way to lower costs or improve call quality, there are several other benefits to the technology. Culver writes, "Carriers of all types will continue to seek ways to avoid the costly PSTN while also interconnecting with new service providers and developing services beyond VOIP, including video, gaming, and multimedia collaboration."

We at Cistera are working hard on building out application services that take advantage of such a network. An example of this is the ability to integrate event alerting and notification solutions between different cities. Each city may be on different VoIP provider but they can using VoIP peering integrate their emergency systems such as two-way radios, SMS and large scale broadcasting for say haz-mat incidents over multiple jurisdictions. Another example maybe to integrate disparate conference and collaboration facilities set up for an emergency. In this case you would have workflow that built emergency multi-jurisdiction responder groups that shared conference and interoperability capabilities that resident on the Service Providers network.

This would be tremendously helpful in meeting federal requirements for intra and inter city response plans at a far cheaper cost than individual jurisdictions purchasing their own equipment. Cistera is also working to build clusters of capability in Service Providers and organizations that can be shared. We believe that this is a far more feasible approach to the challenges of effective response technology.

• VoIP / Convergence