BERLIN, Germany -- A joint public interoperability event has been planned at the International SIP 2004 conference in Paris, France on January 21-22, 2004. Sponsored by the Multiservice Switching Forum (MSF), SIP Forum, and European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC), the event aims to demonstrate general use of carrier-oriented Voice over IP (VoIP) services and applications using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) in a multi-vendor environment. This showcase will be based on the two MSF SIP Implementation Agreements (IAs) addressing SIP-T profile for media gateway controllers and SIP profile for VoIP (MSF-IA-SIP-T.001 and MSF-IA-SIP.001). In addition, the SIP Forum will contribute the initial version of the brand new SIP Forum interoperability test suite the first time in a public event.

The showcase will be presented live to visitors of the leading International SIP conference in Paris, hosted by Upper Side. The results will be summarized in a public white paper. A hot staging event is scheduled before the Paris event and will take place in Berlin at the EANTC lab.

“A number of service providers have recently announced SIP-based voice over IP services, and many more are about to follow,” said Roger Ward, president of the Multiservice Switching Forum. “The MSF focuses the development of SIP IAs to accelerate SIP deployment and to promote an interoperable technology base. This showcase highlights the forum’s goal to advance the SIP technology as part of an open multiservice architecture.”

“This public multi-vendor showcase complements the private SIP Forum test events and is very important for us to demonstrate the advancement of the SIP technology to network operators in Europe,” said Jay Batson, Chairman of the SIP Forum. “Our latest development, a SIP interoperability test suite, will be shown the first time at this event and will soon be available for free use.”

“While most of the deployed SIP networks are homogeneous right now, the power of SIP technology in service provider environments will increase with the number of vendors committed to interoperability of common feature sets,” said Carsten Rossenhövel, managing director research & manufacturer testing at EANTC. “We are happy that two major industry fora, the Multiservice Switching Forum and the SIP Forum, have combined their expertise to support this event. We believe that public recognition of SIP interoperability testing will gain through the demonstration at the well-known International SIP 2004 conference.”