Now this is an intriguing use of SIP! TelTel, who claim to have the largest SIP-based Internet telephony user community, today announced the addition of media channels with its service. The new offerings will include both music and audio programming and already has 13 channels of audio in two different languages. This is the first step as TelTel plans to offer more content and services to its nearly 1 million users. My take is that this is essentially equivalent to iTunes Radio or Windows Media Player Radio... but using a SIP client instead. If you think about it, it's not that difficult to add media content to a SIP client. After all, SIP-based media servers serve "voice prompts" for IVRs that are streamed over RTP, so why not stream music? It's an idea that I actually pondered several weeks ago when I was playing around with XTen's SIP client. Another idea I had was the ability to stream a MP3 or other audio file to the person at the remote end of a SIP call and it will mix the audo with your phone conversation.

Check out the press release:

TelTel Offers New Media Channels Via SIP-based Internet Telephony

Offers 1 million user community unique application of SIP-enabled VoIP technology

TelTel, a provider of SIP-based global Internet telephony service with presence-enabled features, announced today the introduction of innovative media channel services. This new offering of music and audio programming takes TelTel's managed peer-to-peer Internet Telephony network to the next level. Now, its more than 1 million user community can take advantage of TelTel's service for more than voice calling.

These new media channels showcase the many capabilities of TelTel's standards-based SIP technology. They add a new experience to the already popular voice calling to and from anywhere on the planet to fellow TelTel users.

TelTel currently provides 13 channels of audio entertainment in two languages, and plans to expand the range of offerings in the near future. A TelTel user only needs to click on "My Channel" on the softphone and can immediately enjoy a wide variety of content.

"We are very excited to offer these media channels to our user community as an added feature to our instant voice services," said Sherman Tuan, CEO of TelTel. "The media channels give TelTel users more services to choose from and demonstrate our capabilities to provide a platform for a variety of SIP compliant services to the TelTel user community."

A media content provider can be a TelTel partner through its partner
program. Similarly, nearly any telecom service provider using SIP, including
the SIP termination and SIP origination service providers, also can become TelTel's partner through the same partner program. TelTel's user base now has more than one million users, making it the world's largest SIP-based Internet Telephony user community.

TelTel's media service is in beta. TelTel's service is available for download at www.teltel.com.