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BT IP interoperability: a new world of communication
BT's IP interoperability services help communications and service providers face current market challenges and take advantage of new opportunities to thrive. You can migrate and connect to IP, take advantage of convergence, and maximise call quality for your customers - helping you stay ahead of the competition.
What's driving the move to interoperability and convergence?
Some key drivers for change in the telecommunications market are that:
- Operators are moving to IP: Analysys predicts that, by 2015, VoIP will account for 21% of total wireless network voice traffic in developed regions. However, the economic crisis may affect telecoms providers' plans for network upgrades and next-generation application roll-outs. In difficult economic circumstances, partnerships between network operators and third parties can help to optimise investments and minimise risk.
- Consumers are demanding innovation: According to Analysys, by 2015, the services contributing most to wireless network traffic will be video, Web, email and file download. Consumers expect innovative services - including mobile social networking and gaming applications - that support a variety of fixed and mobile devices and technologies. Trans-coding and protocol conversion can enable end users to communicate on different devices and networks that use a range of standards and technologies.
- Business models are changing: New players like Google and Amazon may add significantly to the revenues of service providers in the next few years. Telecoms providers can partner with a variety of players through "two-sided" business models; they therefore need interoperable standards and a simplified transaction model.
BT can help you meet these challenges
To meet your customers' current and future needs, you may need to invest in evolving technology, deal with complex interoperability issues, and negotiate bi-lateral and multi-lateral agreements. But there is an alternative way to develop your IP services...
BT already has strategic partners in the industry. By working with BT, you gain access to PSTN, mobile, international networks and IP networks, and BT's considerable knowledge and expertise. Hence you minimise the need for capital investment or commercial and technical bilateral peering agreements: you are able to generate new revenues without the cost and complexity of dealing with multiple partners. Transactions between providers are simpler, cheaper and more secure with BT's interoperability services. This will take you from a complex, segmented market to an interoperable world where you can seamlessly connect to anyone and differentiate from competition with all the flexibility you need. (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Interoperability
BT IP interoperability services
In this changing environment, BT plans to offer a complete range of IP-based services to keep pace with end users' requirements. You will be able to seamlessly select the following BT IP interoperability services:
- Inter-provider connectivity (available now)
- Numbering and routing (planned)
- Value-added services (planned)
All customers are different. BT will therefore provide a building-block approach: you will be able to choose components from the different layers, shown in Figure 2, to meet your needs.
Figure 2: BT's flexible approach to interoperability services
On each layer, to optimise all services, BT will provide transaction and clearing, security services, and reporting and monitoring.
Inter-provider connectivity
The market penetration of VoIP is low at the moment compared to TDM, but growing. Therefore VoIP originators need the ability to convert their VoIP calls to something traditional TDM networks understand. They can invest in media gateways to do this translation, incurring high capital expense, and then send BT the traffic as TDM via their existing interconnects. Or they can do it more simply and at lower cost via BT's interoperability services. These enable communication providers and service providers to connect themselves and their end users to each other - connect to one, connect to many. BT makes it simpler and more secure for content providers and service providers to deliver and receive services.
BT's IP interoperability hub offers a gateway between IP and TDM communication and makes it simple and efficient to access more routes and greater capacity. Any platform, switch, protocol or application can connect with BT and/or any other network via BT: BT's interoperability services enable communications independent of user technology, protocol, network or device (see Figure 3). BT secures interoperability with other players: you therefore do not need to support all protocols and codecs.
Figure 3: Inter-provider connectivity
These interoperability services are compliant with GSMA, i3 and other defined standards. Through BT's global network and global IPX platform, BT provides a secure, open and flexible environment.
Future services
BT plans to provide:
- Numbering and routing / ENUM: BT will offer its IP-connected customers least-cost, quality-based, flexible routing (see Figure 4).
Numbering plans and number portability are available in the UK. BT's ENUM service will extend these to other countries and provide E164 (phone number) to IP address translation.
BT will offer security and legal/regulatory compliance.
Figure 4: Numbering and routing
- Value-added services: You will be able to enhance your connectivity services with a rich suite of value-added services (see Figure 5).
Figure 5: Value-added services
Open interfaces will give access to BT platforms and applications, including a suite of new presence-exploiting applications. For security, BT will manage all communication-critical components.
Why BT?
By using its existing strengths in IP platforms and channel reach in more than 170 countries, along with its technical domain expertise as a specialist provider, BT provides an open, secure and flexible environment that enables communication providers and service providers to connect, pay and get paid for interconnectivity.
By working with BT, you can create a simple, robust interoperability solution to meet your specific needs, without the need for major capital investment: you can grow your VoIP services and deliver the flexible, innovative services your customers want in the 21st century.
For further information about BT interoperability services, please contact your account manager.
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