Voice Peering Fabric Hilo HI

By Robert Poe

Stealth Communications Inc. has an ambitious goal: connecting the islands of VoIP all over the world into a seamless whole. Its tool, VPF (Voice Peering Fabric), provides a place where VoIP providers can exchange voice traffic directly, rather than having to do so through the PSTN (public switched telephone network). This exchange, called peering, brings providers big benefits in terms of economics, features and quality.

Stealth recently unveiled changes that will make the VPF more accessible and flexible. It also launched a service to help traditional telecom companies exchange traffic more easily.

How VPF Operates

Stealth's VPF has nodes in 10 cities where service members can connect to its network. Connecting allows members to pass voice calls from their users to other VoIP providers to terminate, and to terminate calls from other providers' users. VPF is currently handling 1.5 billion minutes of calls per day, according to CEO Shrihari Pandit.

The Benefits of Peering

One of the main benefits to VoIP providers of avoiding the PSTN is that they don't have to pay traditional phone companies to transport or terminate the calls in question. Another is that it lets them avoid the quality degradation that occurs when calls transit from one type of network to another. A third is that it allows VoIP vendors to preserve all the extra IP-based features and capabilities they might pack into a call, such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) video and telepresence. Doing so is impossible when the calls transit traditional phone networks.

Major Changes for VPF

Previously, only facilities-based VoIP providers, which have their own switches and networks that let them physically connect to VPF, could use the service. But some of the most innovative new developments, Pandit said, are coming from what he called software-based telecoms — that is, phone companies that don't have their own physical networks, but rather deliver their services over the Internet. As a result, Stealth decided to allow such companies to use VPF as well, which was one of the key components of its recent announcement.

Also important was a major change in the rules governing how VoIP providers peer with each other through VPF. Previously, all members had to exchange traffic with each other, providing the numbers of all of their users and agreeing to terminate all calls to those numbers. Now Stealth will allow them to set up self-chosen groups with whom to exchange traffic.

That opens up all sorts of possibilities, according to Pandit. "What if all the voice-mashup companies want to be able to send calls only among members of their own community?" he said. "They can have voice-mashup peering group." More mundanely, an enterprise might create a group comprising its family of companies, so that any affiliated company could join and route calls for free to any other such company. Pandit also expects facilities-based and Internet-based VoIP providers to serve as large groups of their own.

Stealth is also setting up an online clearing house that will make it easier for all phone companies, not just VoIP providers, to exchange traffic. A Web-based sales portal will allow carriers to log on to buy and sell call-termination services. Telcos will be able to publish, for example, the area codes and exchanges where they can complete calls, as well as the amount they will charge for doing so. Carriers needing completion will be able to choose a telco based on price, quality, reputation, route diversity or anything else, and purchase minutes via a drag-and-drop interface similar to the familiar online shopping cart. Stealth will also provide an API (application programming interface) to allow carriers to fully automate the purchasing process.

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