ETSI Holds Telecom Summit

SOPHIA-ANTIPOLIS, France -- Telecommunications network operators, service providers, manufacturers and regulators met to learn about important developments in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and the benefits of migration towards next-Generation Networks (NGN), at an industry summit in Bruges, Belgium, on 24 June 2002.The 'TIPHON-NGN Summit' was organized by EP TIPHON - the European Telecommunications Standards Institute's (ETSI's) Project ‘Telecommunications and IP Harmonization Over Networks’. This event, hosted by Belgacom, attracted 120 participants, the majority from Europe, but also including participants from Asia, Africa and America.EP TIPHON is responsible in ETSI for the interoperability of multimedia communications services within NGN and with the existing Public Switched Telephone Networks/Integrated Services Digital Networks (PSTN/ISDN). NGN are new Internet packet-based networks which support a variety of new, differentiated voice and multimedia services. NGN offer significant benefits in terms of economics and the provisioning of new services; operators, service providers and manufacturers within the telecommunications industry have joined together in planning for, adopting and promoting this new technology.The Summit presented a detailed overview of EP TIPHON’s recent achievements, its ongoing goals, and its role in NGN standardization, addressing both technical and business management issues. EP TIPHON is arguably unique in the world of standards bodies and fora because it looks at the entire NGN picture without mandating a specific implementation or deployment architecture. Its recently published ’Release 3’ package includes aspects of security, mobility, billing and quality of service for VoIP networks, and is seen as a major milestone on the path towards true NGN implementation. Network operators who specify that equipment provided by manufacturers be TIPHON-compliant will be able to offer interoperable and inter-domain services.European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)