The Communications Alliance today announced two new industry guidelines which have been developed to assist operators meet QoS performance objectives when delivering VoIP services and IP networks. Australia is the first country in the world to develop such guidelines, although they have been aligned with and built on international recommendations. The guidelines were developed by a Communications Alliance working committee comprised of representatives from the telecommunications industry and government regulatory agencies.

It will provide a basis for the delivery of next generation services such as interactive voice or video to end users across different providers. The guidelines address the challenge of using a single broadband connection to combine voice and/or video applications with less time sensitive applications such as Web browsing and e-mail, while not compromising the experience of the voice/video.

At present some network operators may manage the user experience of this within their respective networks, but not across different networks.

Alliance CEO, Anne Hurley, said the guidelines offer service providers an indicator of quality for VoIP services and information on factors that determine conversational voice quality on VoIP services.

Hurley said the IP Guideline has been developed as a planning guide to help operators meet QoS performance objectives. "With the growth of large VoIP deployments and the increase in IP telephony service subscribers, the number of VoIP calls that cross multiple networks will inevitably grow," she said.

"Similarly, many telephony service providers are migrating to IP core networks, and all-IP interfaces for the exchange of telephony traffic. "In this changing environment, it is increasingly important for the industry to have guidelines that ensure cohesion between networks as well as the best quality of service for customers. "The next important step will be the implementation and successful use of the guidelines by the industry. We would then expect improvements to end user experiences, particularly when calls traverse multiple networks."

The guideline covers three traffic classes: a "best efforts" class (similar to current Internet services); a managed class for time critical services with low tolerance for interruption (e.g. for applications such as interactive voice or video that need a steady, continuing flow of data for the application to operate well); and another managed class for services that are still time critical but with slightly less sensitivity to interruption (e.g. for applications such as 'real time' or interactive data that need a short response time but can tolerate some variance). It also defines a number of categories for voice services providing an indicator of voice service quality and guidance on the influence of a number of factors such as: delay (the time from mouth to ear); echo (the amount of speech reflected back to the speaker); codec choice (the method for converting speech into electrical signals and back again); and loss (the amount by which the electrical signal fades as it travels along a line) to come up with this indicator.

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