Acme Packet SVP of Strategy Seamus Hourihan on SIP Connect, Peering, and SNCs

Suzanne Bowen : Monetizing IP Communications
Suzanne Bowen
37 yrs in telecom, teaching, blog & grant writing, biz development, marketing, & PR. Favorite moments in life involve time w/ family & friends, networking, IP communications industry verticals & horizontals, running, traveling, foreign languages
| 1. "Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition..." Barack Obama ..... 2. "One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." By Thomas Sowell

Acme Packet SVP of Strategy Seamus Hourihan on SIP Connect, Peering, and SNCs

seamus_hourihan_acmepacket_snc.jpgWhat a delight to be educated by another industry expertsuzannebowen2012.jpg
Seamus Hourihan. I was referred to Acme Packet's SVP of corporate strategy during the company's party and reception at Acme Oyster House in New Orleans the week of 2012 International CTIA Wireless conference.

Click to stream or download our discussion of a favorite travel location NOLA, the misson of Acme Packet, Wind Mobile's recent selection of Acme Packet for SIP connect, opportunities this provides, what is SIP, and what is the difference between private and public interconnects and peering.

"Mobile services supported by 4G and LTE networks are compelling in their capabilities. All access by and large is heading toward the mobile ...," says Mr. Hourihan. "... CTIA is a huge show for meeting with and gaining quality customers and vendors ... ancillary providers, press analysts ..."

The mission of Acme Packet is partly to enable mobile services and applications to be delivered in a first-class and trusted way. Acme Packet products, in this scenario, create a session delivery network, which is the overlay network to the IP transfer network that adds additional intelligence to that network. Security and high quality delivery of interactive voice, video, associated IM, and texting in the IP world are the major goal. The company Acme Packet focuses on session delivery network infrastructure (SDNs).

Seamus compares what Acme Packet does to Fedex as an overlay, priority package delivery network. With Fedex, one has airplanes, vans and people who assure delivery of packages from sender to receiver. They both offer expedited delivery and pickup options, delivery tracking, delivery guarantees, and signatures, for example. Fedex takes care of physical delivery of physical goods offline. Acme Packet takes care of online delivery of services.

The talk moves to an explanation of SIP interconnect: the setting up, modification of and termination of a voice call. Now, in the traditional telephony world, the interconnects are called TDM interconnect, but in the IP world, the most popular is the SIP interconnect. One of the many advantages of using SIP is the extreme reduction of cost, at least 50 %. Plus, it enables voice, video, documents and other media over Internet sharing and communications flexibly and with many business-enabling features.

On the other hand, every silver lining has a cloud, and I do not requote Mary Kay Ash's words to discredit cloud communications. It empowers, and Acme Packet agrees, but the company also believes, "In IP, we trust no one."

Seamus Hourihan notes security, service level agreement assurance, and  regulatory compliance are crucial for operators and providers. A session border controller can get the voice traffic on to and off of high quality networks for first class service delivery. It also maximizes mobile operator customers' revenue and works to prevent terrorist or other illegal activity that can interrupt services.

The conversation switches to a term dear to telecom and mobile providers' hearts and that is "settlement." Things have changed and will continue to change. Our products and services in any industry that are sold and used today ... are very likely to become not so useful and lucrative. This is because technologies, tastes, and ways of doing business and conducting our lives ... change. Such appears to be the case of "settlement" or paying for call termination, a traditionally expected source of telecommunications income.

There is a move to a "bill and keep" model, also known as Net Payment Zero. It is more like the Internet in terms of peering. Call it exchange of traffic. Each network agrees to terminate calls from the other network at no charge. There are a few exceptions, but in this model, there are issues related to the quality of service offered to the end user. Why?

Our talk returns to Canada-based WindMobile's choice of Acme Packet for SIP connect in May 2012. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's list of standards, technical specifications list, and system plans is at http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/h_sf01375.html. For example, they are in the process of requiring SIP-based interconnects among service providers. Mr. Hourihan states that this is a hot topic among telecommunications analysts and consultants.

The next topic is that of public versus private peering. Windmobile is an example bilateral interconnect relationships with other service providers that do business in Canada. Bilateral meaning a relationship between two service providers. Such is a private peering relationship. On the other hand, there are multi-lateral private peering available such as with Xconnect. In addition, public SIP DID peering is available within the DIDXchange. With Xconnect's Global Alliance, service providers are able to bypass the PSTN to exchange VoIP traffic with over 100 networks worldwide. With DIDXchange, service providers can buy and resell as well as sell wholesale SIP DID of 55 nations among around 22,000 members.

Meet Acme Packet at the dozens of conferences and events they participate in each years such as SIP NOC, CommunicAsia, GSMA World Mobile Congress, and CTIA Wireless. Visit http://www.acmepacket.com/company/events for more opportunities. Their latest news including Telefonica Germany choice of Acme Packet Core SIP and Diameter routing solution is at http://www.acmepacket.com/company/press-releases.

I also recommend Mobility Tech Zone and ITEXPO West October 2 - 5, 2012 in Austin, as well as Asian Carriers Conference in Cebu, Philippines and 4G World in Chicago.

Of the 392 audio podcast interviews I've co-created for DIDX.net, AstraQom.com, Podbean, and other companies, some of the ones with the most hits ("listens" and "downloads") are ones in which the interviewee shares analogies such as the Acme Packet / Fedex comparision. Analogies, short stories and / or humor are the best. Seamus Hourihan did a great job with analogies in this interview. Sometimes this makes a new or difficult concept easy to understand.

What other analogies can be made regarding 4G, LTE, IP communications, and IP peering private and public services? Feel free to comment on that and regarding any debate, discussion here and on other social media platforms.

Feel free to listen to another audio podcast between Acme Packet's Seamus Hourihan and Douglas Green of Telecom Reseller at http://www.telecomreseller.com/2012/07/05/acme-packet-is-more-than-sbcs/ and also with me at http://didx.net/podcast/?p=episode&name=2012-07-25_acmepacket_ctiawireless2012_z.mp3, sponsored by DIDXchange.

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