How unified platform Softswitch accelerates the development of VoIP

In general, traditional fixed network operators regard the VoIP service brought about by NGN as a flood, because VoIP blurs the cost standard of local and international long-distance speech, long-distance calls are the main profit sources of traditional operators. The nature of the Internet makes data or voice transmission over the Internet free of payment. In fact, the Internet is still a physical network, and its construction and transmission of information on it.

Of course there is still a cost, but this cost is much lower than the transmission cost of traditional circuit exchange technology. At the same time, this transmission cost has been absorbed by access charging, advertising charging and some content charging, so it seems negligible. However, once the telecom network enters the NGN era, long-distance VoIP transmission is likely not provided free of charge, which will be a problem that operators and regulators need to solve.

At present, many manufacturers of the softswitch platform have made it possible for broadband phones to have good compatibility. Therefore, operators should not only consider reducing the operating costs of broadband phones, but also rely on the close cooperation of terminal equipment providers when launching the Territory extension.

VoIP opportunities

At the Beijing Communications exhibition that ended recently, VoIP Based on Softswitch experienced various forms of sublimation. As a technology, he provided a lot of room for operators to demonstrate: new businesses are emerging one after another, value-added services can generate a steady stream of revenue. Value-added services that have been talked about for a long time include unified messaging, Number portability, One Number, PC to Phone, Internet Call Waiting, and Voice Portal.

VoIP has taken a big step towards the multi-network integration vision, truly integrating voice and data into one network, this means that only one network needs to be built and maintained to provide services supported by multiple networks in the past, and the construction and O & M costs are reduced. VoIP is capable of voice compression and bandwidth statistics reuse, which is higher than traditional PSTN network bandwidth utilization and reduces transmission costs. The operator expects VoIP to significantly reduce the cost of long-distance speech.

In fact, there is a big gap between VoIP network operations and the original ideas. The VoIP networks of most carriers in China are hosted on private networks, that is, IP infrastructure networks specially built for VoIP. The reason is simple. Only in this way can we ensure service quality and system security. Currently, the quality of the IP bearer network remains unsolved, and the quality of VoIP cannot be guaranteed. Security issues cannot be ignored. Like QoS, private networks are the most thorough solution. Therefore, most carriers chose to create a private network for VoIP. For operators, the network not only has not been reduced, but has increased. In the past, the two networks of voice and data have changed to three networks: traditional voice, voice IP, and data IP. In addition, the devices of mainstream VoIP manufacturers are usually unable to communicate with each other because of technical and manufacturers' interests. As a result, many operators have multiple independent VoIP networks, communication between these VoIP networks can only be achieved by circuit switches. There is another problem that cannot be ignored. As a new technology, VoIP requires far higher O & M personnel than traditional switches. This actually increases the O & M cost of VoIP. Therefore, VoIP requires a unified platform for improvement and development.

Opportunities revealed by NGN

As the concept of the Next Generation Network (NGN) has gradually increased, the softswitch, which is regarded as the core of the NGN, has become one of the most popular technologies. The concept of Softswitch is fundamentally different from that of VoIP. VoIP can only be regarded as one of the services provided by SoftSwitch. Softswitch should be a comprehensive business platform. In addition to voice, it also supports video, instant messaging, games, and various data services.

The provision of local Softswitch telephone services requires a complete set of technical specifications. In addition to basic call control protocols such as H.248, MGCP, and SIP, a large number of interfaces and processes have no international specifications, no manufacturer can have factual standards. The operator has learned a lot about VoIP and cannot tolerate private intercommunication interfaces. In the rush to implement the service, the operator must coordinate the relevant equipment vendors to develop enterprise specifications to achieve interconnection between devices of different manufacturers.

At present, Softswitch can only compete for the market at a low price, but the high access costs and interconnection costs, coupled with the cost of equipment, put a lot of pressure on the cost of SoftSwitch. It is hoped that the bandwidth carrying voice can share the broadband access cost, while many operators expect the profit of local Softswitch is assumed that broadband access has shared all the access costs. In addition, the general situation is that the local broadband access scale of competitors is very small. In this case, local Softswitch phones cannot achieve the scale effect, and the cost per line is much higher than that of Local PSTN. If the operators and equipment vendors cannot effectively avoid risks, long-distance VoIP will reappear, and local Softswitch will return to the PSTN to a certain extent.

We should realize that voice is only one of the services in the next generation of telecommunication networks. Data features in network services will be even more prominent. Carriers and equipment vendors should not regard Softswitch as only one telephone platform. The soft switches that only provide telephone services cannot shake the deep-rooted Foundation of the PSTN.

Softswitch uses SIP as the core protocol. The service independence of SIP can make Softswitch a comprehensive service platform. The core part of the softswitch should also be unrelated to the business. The practice of moving the business processing module of the traditional switch as the core part of the softswitch obviously limits the service capability of the softswitch, it violates the idea of SoftSwitch.