First national VoIP quality standards

An Australian industry association has released first ever national industry guidelines for VoIP and IP Quality of Service (QoS) performance. The Communication Alliance released the QoS guidelines which aim to deliver next generation services like interactive voice and IP video across different providers. The guidelines are for wireline only and were developed by a cross industry/government group. They address the challenge of using a single broadband connection to combine voice and/or video applications with less time sensitive applications such as web browsing and email, while not compromising the experience of the voice/video.

Alliance CEO Anne Hurley said while some network operators manage the user experience within their own networks, QoS was not managed across different networks. "The VoIP Guideline offers service providers an indicator of quality for VoIP services and information on factors that determine conversational voice quality on VoIP Services," Hurley said. "The IP Guideline has been developed as a planning guide to help operators meet QoS performance objectives."

"With the growth of large VoIP deployments and the increase in IP telephony service subscribers, the number of VoIP calls that cross multiple networks will inevitably grow. Similarly, many telephony service providers are migrating to IP core networks, and all-IP interfaces for the exchange of telephony traffic. In this changing environment, it is increasingly important for the industry to have guidelines that ensure cohesion between networks as well as the best quality of service for customers."

The guidelines lay out "static" QoS targets for service where no negotiation is required between networks. The group said principles for "dynamic" QoS delivery--where negotiation was required--were not yet stabilized internationally. In any case "the assumption of growing IP bandwidth in access and core networks means that these dynamic methods will probably not be required for some services (e.g. voice), but may become more important for bandwidth-intensive applications (e.g. video on-demand)."

For more:
- Australia's VoIP QoS guidelines
- Communications Alliance announcement of national VoIP guidelines

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