The issue of carrier interconnection rules related to next-generation networking seems to be heating up. So New Telephony interviewed industry veteran Dave Malfara, president and CEO of Remi Communications, a 6-year-old application network provider in the Northeast, on the matter.
A 30-year telecom veteran, Malfara has founded or co-founded several successful companies, including Z-Tel Network Services and Pace Communications. He’s addressed telecommunications issues before various regulatory agencies and legislative bodies. And he serves as a director of COMPTEL, for which he also chairs the Technology Task Force.
Malfara will be among the panelists for the “Next Generation Interconnection” session Oct. 8 at the COMPTEL PLUS Fall 2007 Convention & Expo in Dallas. He’ll be a speaker at the xchange Capital 2.0 event Sept. 26 in Secaucus, N.J.
NT: Your COMPTEL panel is called “Next Generation Interconnection – The Challenges Ahead.” How have interconnection considerations changed as the industry has migrated to IP?
DM: There are 100 years of precedence with regards to networks evolving, the public switched telephone network evolving, over a period of time and accommodating that evolution with the required interconnection necessary to optimize the efficient use facilities.
In other words, it’s SS7 now. That would presume that there were other signaling systems that came before it.
So now why is SIP different? Well, SIP isn’t different, it’s simply the next evolution of the PSTN signaling system, and there are others, of course.
And what we’re looking for as competitors are efficient ways to interconnect our networks.
Now, from the Telecom Act and before, there’s been activity within the industry to try to identify the ways in which carriers interconnect in order to efficiently transport telephone calls. Whereas the regional Bell would probably like to take this discussion to a very expanded format, that isn’t what we’re talking about here.
NT: What do you mean “an expanded format?”
DM: They really want to talk right way about the implications of regulating the Internet, and nothing could be further from a competitor’s agenda. We’re not discussing the Internet here. We’re talking about intercarrier interconnection so that we can pass telephone calls back and forth.
And what has happened now is there has been macro-level evolution of network technology, very similar to what happened when we moved from in-band signaling to signaling system 7. And that’s happening right now, and competitors seek efficient methods of interconnection as provided for in the Telecom Act. And that “technically feasible” point of interconnection should be at a point that allows us to use efficient transmission mechanisms for both signaling and media transport so we can complete transport back and forth.
NT: How are you defining “efficient”? Are you talking about the fact that if the competitive carrier is IP they want to interconnect with the incumbent using IP instead of going back to TDM?
DM: Yes, but it’s more than that.
We have local number portability and 800 number portability and CLASS-type local exchange services because of advancements in signaling brought about by SS7 and by Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) technology.
What we’re talking about now, in the new world of voice over packet technology, we’re talking about signaling capabilities [like SIP, H.323, etc.] that allow us to have further advancements over SS7.
So the natural evolution of the PSTN for the past 100 years has been to accommodate those advancements in additional interconnection requirements. The overarching interconnection requirement in the Telecom Act and in the ensuing rules envisioned not only SS7 interconnection and signaling and transport interconnection available the time the Act was signed, but they say at any “technically feasible point” of interconnection. And these certainly are technically feasible; we do it all the time.
NT: What specifically are competitors like Remi looking for related to interconnection rules?
DM: The competitors are looking for interconnection rules that safeguard our continued ability to transmit voice calls to each other with the same quality we do today on the legacy network. As the evolution has happened, that incorporates voice over packet technology.
Now, because there has been such a public visibility of what are called “over-the-top” carriers that carry voice packets over somebody else’s facilities, the RBOCs seem to be trying to confuse our very legitimate requirement for the interconnection that we need as facilities-based carriers to successfully transit telephone calls, with the voice over IP over-the-top carriers that don’t have those interconnection requirements at all because they operate at a level above the physical and signaling levels required for intercarrier interconnection.
NT: So you’re saying that although incumbents have softswitches and other IP gear, they will only provide competitors like Remi with TDM-based interconnection?
DM: Exactly. Also, it has to do with their own customers as well. Let me give you an example. When Remi’s customer, who originates a call using voice over packet technology, wants to terminate a call within the Verizon territory, we must convert that call to old, legacy technology; interconnect to Verizon over old technology; and they in fact may very well be taking that call, converting it back to newer technology and terminating it their customer over FiOS. So now both companies have gone through unnecessary signal conversion in order to be able to connect that call, and I might add, the loss of quality on both sides.
NT: What do you mean by “loss of quality?” Do you mean specific features, the quality of the call itself, or are just you upset because you have to invest in gateways to do the IP-to-TDM conversion?
DM: You’re hitting every single point. And that is that you have a loss of both the quality and the features available, and third, you have the extra cost on both sides of signal and media conversion. Now that has a very real implication, for instance, when you’re talking about businesses. Because in that kind of situation if those circuits are not timed the way in which the packet side of those networks need to be timed faxed won’t work. So you have a lot of idiosyncrasies that are caused simply by the signal conversion itself that are needless because, in fact, both sides might be packet based in their original form.
NT: So are incumbent telcos always requiring competitors to interconnect IP to TDM?
DM: Yes.
NT: It’s across the board?
DM: Yes.
Another point as well is if Remi completes a call locally to say one communications customer, a subscriber of one communication, why must that call go through a Verizon access tandem? The access tandems of the incumbents historically have been used as aggregation points and points within which carriers trade traffic. What we’re also looking for now, because it’s possible – economically feasible and technically feasible – we’re looking for interconnection at a neutral carrier hotel. In that way all carriers can economize transport facilities that they use to interconnect to other carriers.
There is a lot of inefficiency built into the legacy tandem access interconnection method and is needless. We as carriers, when we interconnect in a LATA, must interconnect with the incumbent in all of their access tandems using three different trunk groups to do it. That’s a lot of segregation that really doesn’t need to be done, and we all lose scale economy in doing that.
COMPTEL www.comptel.org
Remi Communications www.remicommunications.com
