The SIP-based communications industry is growing rapidly, largely because of the ease and reliability of connection it enables. Indeed, some reports say it presents more than a $22 billion opportunity, as its adoption continues to grow as a means for businesses to reduce communications costs.

 

But, as with any new communications technology, there is work to be done to ensure the proper interworking of different parts of the call path. Much interoperability work has been done between individual vendors — but tekVizion (News - Alert), looking to drive the growth of the SIP trunking industry, has launched a program to confirm interoperability between PBX (News - Alert) SIP trunks and service provider networks. With the program, the SIP trunking community has a third-party test facility to objectively ensure reliable interworking.

 

tekVision is in many ways better equipped to handle the interoperability testing, since it has access to firewall, PBXs, gateways, endpoints, and other devices from various vendors in its labs. As such, it provides a prime opportunity for nearly any service provider to effectively validate its SIP trunking service. In fact, it has access to more than 250 legacy and next generation vendors’ products in its state-of-the-art test lab.

“tekVizion can help service providers identify potential deployment issues and accelerate the roll-out of SIP Trunking to their enterprise customers without having to dedicate resources or capital to maintaining an emulated network environment,” said Sach Vengurlekar, tekVizion CEO.

 

SIP trunking gives businesses a way of leveraging their VoIP investments, but need the insurance of reliable connectivity from carriers — making interoperability testing crucial. Despite the acceptance of SIP as the standard protocol, various vendors add their own proprietary coding to their products, adding complexity to the interconnects, and necessitating the testing process.

 

“tekVizion’s blend of enterprise telephony skills and SIP protocol expertise helped validate feature transparency and get our SIP trunking service to market quickly,” said Bryan Burns, vice president of network engineering at XO Communications (News - Alert).

 

The tekVizion testing program confirms not only network resiliency and DTMF interoperability, but also various SIP calling features, like call forwarding, call transfer, three-way conferencing, and caller ID — all of which are at risk without certified interoperability.

In addition to its testing services, tekVizion provides consulting services, network integration, support services, and application development services to help further the communications capabilities of the entire industry — end users, service providers, integrators, and resellers.

Erik Linask (News - Alert) is Associate Editor of INTERNET TELEPHONY, IMS Magazine, and Unified Communications (News - Alert). Prior to joining TMC, he was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, an international securities services publication. To see more of his articles, please visit Erik Linask’s columnist page.