The SIP Forum recently announced it’s continuing to do its part to ensure enterprise communications products fully interoperate with service provider networks. In fact, its new SIPconnect Certification Testing Program will be hosted by the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) and is designed to help ensure adherence to the SIPconnect Technical Recommendation currently at Version 1.1.

In an interview with Marc Robins SIPNOC Program Chair and Robert Kinder of Cox Business who also serves as a director, they mentioned the SIPconnect 1.1 spec is about five years old and is currently included in many RFPs. The goal of this new initiative however, is to increase interoperability between IP-PBX providers and service providers.

The idea is to plug in the box to the carrier with less headaches, in less time, and see installation issues and challenges which could have lasted weeks, be reduced to mere hours.

What’s changed is the certifications were being done on the honor principal – where companies filled out forms based on real world results. Now with UNH, lab tests can be done over the Internet, from anywhere.

The first step for obtaining SIPconnect 1.1 certification is to complete the official SIPconnect Certification Testing Program application form. For a detailed look at the entire process, you may view and/or download a program “Process Overview” diagram.

Once approved by the SIP Forum, the associated SIP Forum SIPconnect Certification Testing Program License Agreement and UNH-IOL SIPconnect Test Service Agreement are competed and submitted, and the testing fee has been paid, testing can be scheduled and pre-testing may commence if desired. After testing has been completed, an official IOL report will be made available and may optionally be submitted to the SIP Forum for certification consideration.

For more detailed information on how to become SIPconnect Certified, please visit Become SIPconnect Certified.

The UNH-IOL has made an instance of the PCSim2 tool and the SIPconnect 1.1 scripts available for pre-testing. Pre-testing is available for vendors and service providers who have reserved future SIPconnect 1.1 Certification testing with UNH-IOL. The tool may be accessed remotely to test a device located either on site at the IOL, or at the vendor facility. In addition, a Remote Testing option is available for people who are afraid of winter in New England.

The end game is as Robert exclaimed, “Basically driving friction out of the process.” In doing so, we can expect costs for communications systems as well as service to go down. All good news for the market as a whole and especially for IT departments who need to deal with multiple challenges from driving increased productivity through the effective use to tech to cybersecurity and other initiatives.