The GSM Association, host of Mobile World Congress, said on Tuesday that international carriers have completed trials and are now ready to start deploying the first services that use IPX, a private global IP backbone.
The IPX is open to any company that adopts its "technical and commercial principals." Parties involved sign a contract to maintain quality and service performance thresholds, to engender quality and security not found on the open Internet. It also provides full traceability and security.
"The open Internet is a wonderful thing, but when it comes to providing a guaranteed quality of service, particularly for time-critical services, there is still a long way to go," said Alex Sinclair, CTO at GSMA. "By contrast, the IPX should guarantee the reliable and secure carriage of traffic between networks, because each party involved in transmitting the data offer a pre-defined service-level agreement."
The GSMA first published the technical specifications for IPX networks in 2006, with first-phase trial-deployments completed in the last half of 2007. Further trials will be completed in the second quarter, with commercial rollout to follow.
