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Let's talk Voice
Welcome to Let's talk Voice, where we share with you the latest developments in BT's Premium Wholesale Voice services.
The past two quarters have been some of our busiest, challenging and most exciting yet. Not only did we introduce our new SMS Hubbing product but said hello and a warm welcome to new Roam Connect and Premium Voice customers.
New mobile partners for voice that went live include India IDEA and Tigo Rwanda, whose CEO complimented the BT team for the prompt provision of their voice and internet backbone service. BT was already serving Tigo in Sri Lanka and Ghana as a premium voice partner, and gained this additional business through sustained quality of service and trusted reputation.
On the VoIP technology front, we successfully tested and introduced into service SIP-I (encapsulated C7). This is our first directly connected carrier via Fast Ethernet, with bilateral and i3 partner Telecom Italia using G729 codec for 300 simultaneous calls. We experienced six months of painful testing, questioning and lesson learning about how each vendor (Ericsson and Italtel) interpreted the many IP standards. The major obstacle in technical terms seemed to be around a header that informs the distant end of the signaling type.
The ITU recommendation ISUP version "itu-t92+" should be the default, or Standard RFC3204 section 6 as an alternative, according to our BT Design specialists. BT has made recommendations to the i3 Forum, regarding the carrier Technical Interconnect Form, to help resolve any problems of non-standard versions before testing starts and shorten implementation lead times. As the custodian of the i3 Technical Interconnect Form, BT will be happy to make the changes immediately.
On behalf of the i3 Forum, BT GTM also designed and coordinated a survey about VoIP migration. Eighteen leading Tier 1 mobile voice telcos have provided feedback; the results and highlights were presented to the i3 Steering Group in December 2009.
Two of our voice partners generated unexpectedly heavy traffic during the Autumn 2009 quarter:
Vodafone Qatar, the second mobile operator licensed there, as a result of launching prepay in the newly liberalising market of Qatar: BT only went live with them in May 2009. To meet the unanticipated demand, BT provided additional capacity in record time with its technicians staying late to complete the job. Capacity between BT and Vodafone Qatar was further augmented by 250% during December 2009.
Afghanistan Roshan, selected BT as their exclusive voice partner: We have provided additional capacity in three tranches since the service went live in July 2009, with further expansion and diversity provided via satellite just prior to Christmas Eve to increase route capacity by 66%. Roshan is the first carrier with BT to realise carrier-toll-quality voice at 12:1 compression using Veraz Igate compression kit. BT will set up individual links outside Kabul with three regional cities to carry their rest-of-world hubbing traffic via BT's Premium Voice product, which guarantees 100% CLI to 480 international destination breakouts.
BT also launched SMS Hubbing during the Autumn 2009 quarter to simplify international SMS interoperability for its customers. With two variants to suit the requirements of different customers according to their sector, it enables broad international SMS coverage for mobile operators.
In December 2009, BT signed its first SMS Hubbing contract with one of Liberia's mobile service providers, helping the operator reach more destinations and achieve better message completion rates.
For more information about BT SMS Hubbing and the first BT contract, see the article "Spotlight on BT products & services" in this issue of Global Telecom News.
For further information about our other BT Premium Wholesale Voice Services, please contact your voice business manager or see our website.
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