Voice-Enabling the Data Network
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This document provides an overview of the telephony service provider market and the motivation for transitioning to VoIP networks. It discusses the key segments within the service provider market, including incumbent carriers, competitive carriers, cable and mobile operators. The main benefits driving the transition to VoIP are cost savings from leveraging existing IP infrastructure and statistical gains. VoIP also allows new revenue opportunities through services like wholesale minutes, retail minutes, and managed services.
Voice-Enabling the Data Network
- 1. CHAPTER 1 The Telephony Service Provider: An Overview This chapter will assist network engineers, technicians, and other necessary decision makers within telephone companies (telcos) and Internet service providers (ISPs) to understand the transition to a Voice over IP (VoIP) network. Because of the extremely competitive environment in the telco and Internet industry today, the entire group of service providers has an interest in providing VoIP services. The service provider market consists of several segments: • Incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) are the traditional telcos in the United States, which consist of the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) and indepen- dent operating companies (IOCs), which are typically located in less inhabited areas of the country. • Post, Telephone, and Telegraphs (PTTs) are the ILEC equivalent in other parts of the world where deregulation has occurred differently than in the United States. Generally, the incumbent carriers, or PTTs, have not been broken apart into local and long distance businesses but have instead been forced to open up interfaces to com- petitive carriers. This has led to a market of competitive carriers, known as OLOs (other local operators), which are mainly focused on high value business, long distance, and international applications. • Competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) compete with ILECs for local traffic as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. A CLEC can be a data or voice CLEC. • Interexchange carriers (IXCs) are traditional long distance telephone companies. IXCs have primarily provided telephony-switching services but also provide transport services for other telcos and ISPs. Traditional IXCs have recently been acquiring and partnering with ISPs and CLECs to provide local voice and data access in addition to long distance voice service. • ISPs form the national and international backbones for the Internet. They position their services to large business customers and have bilateral interconnect agreements, also referred to as peering partners, with other ISPs. With the addition of voice applications on these networks, ISPs are referred to as Internet telephony service providers (ITSPs).
- 2. 4 Chapter 1: The Telephony Service Provider: An Overview • Cable operators’ networks provide high-speed access to homes and businesses for both high-speed data access and second and primary line voice services. • Mobile operators provide a unique telephony service with the huge advantage that users can make and receive calls virtually anywhere in the developed world. Over the past decade, mobile operators have seen incredible growth in both subscribers and traffic volumes. NOTE Some service providers that offer global data services are transitioning their networks to support voice services. This allows them to compete with traditional service providers that offer voice services. Whether a service provider has deployed an IP infrastructure, is starting with no network, or is simply augmenting a time-division multiplexing (TDM) voice network, transitioning to a VoIP network is essential. Several service providers provide or plan to provide a bundled package of voice and Internet data services to small to medium size businesses by using an integrated access device (IAD) as the customer premises equipment (CPE). Motivation for IP and Voice Convergence Service providers are leveraging worldwide IP-based networks to deliver voice traffic and are migrating away from TDM-based infrastructures. An important question is “Why are service providers choosing an IP network to carry voice traffic instead of a circuit-switched TDM voice network?” The answer lies in the substantial savings that comes from leveraging existing data networking infrastructure equipment and increasing the amount of voice traffic over available transmission infrastructures. These options are not available with traditional circuit-switched TDM-based infrastructures. The immediate cost-saving benefits are not the only thing driving service providers to converge IP and voice services; business strategies are another factor. Telcos are adding data services to grow revenues because TDM services alone are not growing fast enough. Data service providers are adding voice functionality to maintain their customer base because data services alone have become a commodity. By combining voice services with data and new, converged application services, service providers can create a bundled service offering that can preserve and grow its customer base. Because ISPs typically do not own a circuit-switched infrastructure, the main benefit to ISPs is the added value to offer additional voice services on their existing data network, which effectively leverages their existing nationwide or worldwide network to transport voice calls and their existing data traffic. The main benefit to a telco is the increased network efficiency for handling voice traffic and the added ability to introduce new revenue that is generated by integrated voice and data services.
- 3. Motivation for IP and Voice Convergence 5 Besides the savings and strategic reasons for using an IP network for voice and data, VoIP has three other major benefits: • Voice compression • Silence suppression • Statistical gains VoIP can create additional bandwidth as needed by compressing the voice conversation. Currently, VoIP networks can compress up to 1/12 of the original required bandwidth used in TDM while removing any silence in the conversation. NOTE In achieving bandwidth savings, service providers need to carefully calculate the correct level of voice compression to achieve the desired level of voice quality because high compression can degrade the voice quality of a call. In certain areas of the world, bandwidth is inexpensive; therefore, bandwidth savings are not the main concern of the service provider. In these scenarios, voice compression and silence suppression are not used. Furthermore, IP networks can efficiently use the underlying transport network by transmitting IP packets only when necessary. This method of transport, called statistical gains, uses costly transmission circuits only as needed. Unlike IP networks, TDM networks dedicate a certain amount of bandwidth, 64 kbps for each conversation, including any silence, for the duration of the call. The bandwidth is dedicated or nailed up for the duration of the conver- sation. Thus, a VoIP network can handle a higher volume of calls than a switched-circuit TDM network by using the same transmission infrastructure. This savings is most dramatic on expensive long distance calls because VoIP saves on satellite link costs. After a VoIP network is deployed, enhanced services, such as Wholesale Minutes, Retail Minutes, Internet Call Me, and Unified Messaging, can deliver additional revenue opportunities to service providers as value-added services. VoIP benefits to a service provider also include the following: • Reduced total cost of ownership across voice and data platforms • Savings in CAPEX, maintenance, and operations costs • Creation of seamless convergent networks by one switching infrastructure system • Easy scalability • Reduced system turn up time • Bandwidth savings • Fast creation and rollout of new revenue-generating services
- 4. 6 Chapter 1: The Telephony Service Provider: An Overview VoIP Services on the Rise The telecommunications industry has become a highly competitive industry. To survive, service providers must continually find ways to increase revenue and expand services. Voice and data convergence is driving fundamental changes to service providers’ business models and networks. For example, many large traditional service providers have supported both voice services by using TDM and data services by using Frame Relay by developing separate organizations within their companies that now have to work together to provide bundled voice and data services. Putting this into practice has been a challenge for many service providers. Today’s service provider VoIP infrastructures support lucrative business models: • Wholesale VoIP Service • Retail VoIP Service • Integrated Voice and Data Access for Small Businesses • Managed Services for Large Businesses (Enterprises) NOTE Integrated voice and data access and managed services are discussed in Chapter 2, “VoIP Network Architectures: H.323, SIP, and MGCP,” and Chapter 4. Wholesale VoIP Service The exchange of wholesale minutes has been one of the fastest revenue generating services for service providers. This peering relationship is often set up as a bilateral agreement, where service providers commit a certain amount of voice and fax minutes each month and a defined service level to each other. This business model offers telcos and ISPs three advantages: • Service providers can offer VoIP services more quickly than through traditional methods. • Service providers can leverage their partners’ VoIP infrastructure and minimize the cost of deploying long distance service. • With the right peering partners, service providers can extend their reach almost anywhere in the world, which eliminates the need to provide their own termination points to complete the VoIP call. It is important to recognize that long distance calls are subject to access charges that can be significantly high in cost. ILECs and IXCs historically have higher tariffs for long distance calls than transporting these voice calls over a circuit-switched TDM network. However, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) current stance is that an IP packet carrying voice is not a conventional long distance phone call. This means that VoIP can have
- 5. VoIP Services on the Rise 7 substantial return on investment for a service provider. The growth of VoIP wholesale service has skyrocketed because of the regulatory bypass that the FCC created. For example, a traditional call from Atlanta to New York City might consist of the following fees: • Local access fee in Atlanta • Long distance fee • Local access fee in New York City VoIP can eliminate the long distance fee and perhaps the local access fees depending upon the pairing arrangements. For many service providers, wholesale VoIP service is a significant portion of revenues, so the objective within the wholesale market is to increase the number of minutes that are received from a peering service provider. Equally important to this objective is obtaining an efficient level of voice compression while maintaining the Service Level Agreement (SLA). In many situations, small increases in compression of large volumes of traffic can generate millions of dollars of additional revenue per month. For example, a service provider with a VoIP network that terminates 100 million minutes per month with a profit margin of three cents can generate an additional $750,000 by squeezing out 25 percent more bandwidth through compression to carry 25 percent more voice traffic. The challenge in providing wholesale VoIP service lies in developing strong relationships with the selected partners, whether the terminating partner is a regional telco in the United States or a large ISP in Italy. Wholesale long distance is becoming an aggressive and com- petitive business because of the growing number of companies around the world that are transitioning to a VoIP network. A good peering partner must possess the following traits: • Strong SLAs—An SLA needs to be measured by the following parameters: — Network uptime — Delay variance in end-to-end packets over time — Packet loss trends — Answer Seizure Ratio (ASR) — Post Dial Delay (PDD) — Available voice coder-decoders (codecs) • Competitive termination rates • Extended reach to strategic termination points • Volume of originating and terminating VoIP minutes • Vendor type of VoIP equipment • Financially stable business
- 6. 8 Chapter 1: The Telephony Service Provider: An Overview Selecting peering partners can be an overwhelming task. Service providers needs to commit to their SLA for their individual subscribers, which results in the requirements of achieving an equal or higher level of SLA from their peering partners. Service providers use different criteria to select a peering partner. Security and network connection methods can be a major factor in selecting a peering partner. For example, Internet versus private peering can be a deciding factor in peering agreements. Many strategic peering partners are selected based on the amount of IP voice minutes that are reciprocated by the terminating service provider. For example, two service providers can peer together based on expectations that they can increase each other’s volume of IP voice minutes. The cost to terminate each other’s IP voice minutes can be based on the volume of voice traffic. Many service providers form more than one peering relationship, which permits the service providers to select the most cost- effective rates for terminating their voice and fax calls. Today, service providers determine the least cost route either statically or dynamically. Least Cost Routing (LCR) enables ser- vice providers to always obtain the lowest termination costs. NOTE LCR is important in determining the route that the call traverses, especially with wholesale ITSPs. The peering partners of a wholesale ITSP change rates on a weekly or daily basis. Therefore, every call must be routed to the route with the least cost to enable the ITSP to maximize profits. The billing system calculates the rating of the call route. Although terminating other service provider’s VoIP minutes can be lucrative in the whole- sale service market, there are some disadvantages to negotiating bilateral agreements. One disadvantage is that peering relationships must be created with service providers in various regions of the world. Consequently, unique communications interface requirements for interconnection increases lead time for offering VoIP services in the desired countries. Fur- thermore, the service provider must handle each individual settlement for call accounting with each peering partner. For this reason, many service providers choose a clearinghouse model to reduce risks and to limit the risk of constant fluctuations of worldwide termination rates. A clearinghouse service provider has established termination agreements with a group of service providers and uses economies of scale to provide cost-effective termination rates to its regional cus- tomers by consolidating multiple regional (or global) service providers. The clearinghouse service provider might have a limited VoIP infrastructure or might not have a VoIP infra- structure at all! This is a settlement provider, and (as mentioned) this company might not be an ITSP at all; it might provide only settlement services. More importantly, a clearing- house service provider extends the service reach of its service provider’s customer beyond its VoIP network coverage area. For example, a clearinghouse service provider can route the originating service provider’s traffic and terminate this traffic with another service pro- vider’s network in the target country or city where the call terminates. Besides handling the complex call routing and call rating, a clearinghouse service provider handles the settle- ment of the VoIP termination costs for each service provider that uses its service.
- 7. VoIP Services on the Rise 9 Mainly, vendor-specific methods of performing the clearinghouse functionality exist today. This is a disadvantage because the clients of the wholesale service provider must support the same clearinghouse software. This means that VoIP equipment must be identical between the wholesale service provider and its clients. However, this requirement is slowly changing because of an emerging protocol called Open Settlement Protocol (OSP). OSP is an open standard for performing a clearinghouse service. OSP can create rating and routing tables to mesh together multiple service providers to form interconnections between their VoIP networks by using a standard framework; therefore, a more cost-effective combi- nation of service providers can be produced. OSP uses a standard set of messages and pro- cedures to transfer accounting and routing information from VoIP gateways in a secure manner. Instead of the clearinghouse service provider settling based on terminating minutes by exchanging spreadsheets or database files, OSP provides clearinghouse service provid- ers a standard method and format of call authorization, call accounting, and call settlement for VoIP calls. NOTE Call settlement for VoIP calls refers to monitoring and reporting transactions for charging VoIP calls within the network shared by two or more service providers. For example, two service providers might use each other’s network to terminate minutes. One service provider might have the ability to terminate voice minutes in China whereas another might have the ability to terminate minutes in the United States at competitive rates. OSP provides the ability to automatically determine how many minutes of voice calls were terminated and charging for the voice calls between service providers in a secure manner. Retail VoIP Service The Retail VoIP Minutes model is composed of calling card services. Calling cards can be prepaid or postpaid and have become financially attractive to service providers because the user buys phone cards in various increments, such as $5 or $25, which are prepaid and often not used to their full value. A growing demand for prepaid cards exists with travelers, college students, military service personnel, and low-income families. In addition, many service providers are selling prepaid calling cards in underdeveloped countries where telephone service (especially international) is expensive and in places where telephone service is scarce. With calling card and messaging services, phone service can be provided to people in countries (Russia, China, Africa, India, and so on) that do not have residential phones. A user starts the call by dialing an access number with a calling card service. A VoIP gateway answers the call and, based on the number dialed, determines whether the user is calling a prepaid or postpaid number. If the user is a postpaid service, the gateway prompts the caller to enter the calling card number and PIN, if necessary. In addition to fraud detection and avoidance, the challenge with prepaid and postpaid services is to achieve a
- 8. 10 Chapter 1: The Telephony Service Provider: An Overview high penetration rate across different niche markets while retaining the subscribers through customer service and voice quality. A VoIP network provides easy and quick access to both prepaid and postpaid services. Service providers that provide calling card services are beginning to introduce a set of enhanced new services called unified messaging, which is the convergence of voice, data, and e-mail. Unified messaging provides new features beyond simple call features offered with prepaid and postpaid calling cards to a service provider’s customers. These features include the following: • Voice messaging over IP • Forward voice messages as e-mail attachments • Access e-mail messages from a phone Figure 1-1 shows the ease of adding unified messaging to a VoIP network. A set of databases and application servers are interfaced to the core IP network through Ethernet connections. These interfaces are based on a framework from Cisco called Open Packet Telephony (OPT) that opens the call control function within the VoIP network to software developers to provide enhanced services. Figure 1-1 Unified Messaging PSTN IP Network Databases PSTN Unified Messaging Applications
- 9. The VoIP Network Architecture: Gateways and Gatekeepers 11 Successful VoIP Deployments The number of service providers, including ILECs, in the wholesale VoIP market has grown rapidly over the few years. ILECs are responding to the significant competition as the CLECs and cable operators gain access to the local access market. ILECs created a new organization to offer wholesale VoIP services. These ILECs provide wholesale local exchange access based on VoIP. In other words, ILECs are taking part in terminating international retail or wholesale VoIP calls in their particular regions of service. ILECs deploy VoIP gateways to convert incoming IP-based calls into a public switched telephone network (PSTN) format. ILECS then provide the final leg of transport and switching of the PSTN traffic to the final destination. NOTE The CLEC market has significantly reduced in size after the recent economy contraction. As a result, the competitive landscape for ILECs has significantly changed. ILECs have always provided IXCs with local access to their subscribers and local switched network. Now, ILECs simply provide the same service by using VoIP technology instead of circuit-switched TDM technology. Some ILECs also provide origination of international minutes, such as handing off to an ITSP. For example, ITSPs can terminate their IP-based calls through an ILEC’s regional points of presence (POPs), making use of its gateways and gatekeepers to send voice calls over the PSTN. This eliminates the requirement for these retail and wholesale service providers (ITSPs) to set up their own POPs with links to the Internet and local PSTNs, which results in tremendous savings in capital outlay expenditures. Service providers such as IXCs, which have traditionally focused on originating and terminating international minutes, are transitioning their networks to support VoIP. Service providers are continuing to establish peering relationships with ILECs and PTTs to extend their reach in the United States, Canada, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia. The VoIP Network Architecture: Gateways and Gatekeepers Large scalable VoIP devices are displacing legacy circuit switches within telco networks. These VoIP devices are called gateways and gatekeepers, and this section explains their functionality.
- 10. 12 Chapter 1: The Telephony Service Provider: An Overview NOTE VoIP and gateway are general terms that imply that the underlying technology is either H.323, SIP, MGCP, MEGACO, or some combination of these. However, the term gatekeeper implies that VoIP is H.323-based only. Gateways terminate voice, fax, and data traffic, which create a POP for the service provider. Gatekeepers implement the dialing plan and map traditional phone numbers to IP addresses that are understood by the packet network. Gateways perform a translation function between the PSTN network and the IP-based network. Wholesale VoIP service providers strategically position their gateways and gatekeepers to minimize the network costs associated with terminating and originating VoIP traffic. A general rule in designing VoIP networks is to transport all telephone calls over IP unless restricted by local, state, or country regulations. Voice quality is a critical factor in determining the success or failure of a service provider. A PSTN-level of voice quality can be achieved by using the correct design criteria and techniques to fine-tune the network. The key components in determining voice quality are end-to-end latency, packet loss, and echo and compression. These components are discussed in detail in later chapters. After voice quality is acceptable, VoIP call authentication and call routing can be tested. NOTE If the packet network is voice only, as it is for some service providers that provide calling card applications or alternate long distance calling, voice quality is much easier to deal with. Service providers have the challenge to provide consistent and appropriate levels of voice quality in a mixed voice and data network. Chapter 5, “QoS Considerations in VoIP Network Design,” discusses this topic. The main function of the gateway is to translate calls between packet networks and switched- circuit TDM networks. Gatekeepers possess the knowledge to select call routing and call rating, and other vendor specific services. A centralized Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) server and a gateway normally handle caller authentication. Authentication can be based on the originating number without any caller interaction or on the account number and PIN entered by the caller. A sequence of steps exists for caller authentication: Step 1 Interactive voice response (IVR) software collects the caller’s card number and PIN. This is called two-stage dialing.
- 11. Summary 13 Step 2 The gatekeeper authenticates the account and PIN digits entered by the caller. Or the gatekeeper automatically receives an automatic number identification (ANI) without any caller interaction when it is available across a Signaling System 7 (SS7) network, ISDN, or Feature Group D network, or EIR2 network. Authentication based on ANI is called single- stage dialing. Step 1 does not occur for single-stage dialing. Step 3 The ANI or account and PIN digits are passed on to the RADIUS server to authenticate the caller. After the caller is authenticated, the gatekeeper, based on the phone number dialed, deter- mines the destination route. The gatekeeper has access to a database that contains all authorized call routes. Call routes can be based on all dialed digits or on only a portion of the dialed digits, such as the city code; service providers also have the ability to block certain dialed numbers, country codes, and city codes. Seven Steps in Designing and Implementing a VoIP Network Deploying a service provider’s VoIP network includes the following seven key steps, which are discussed later in this book: Step 1 Select the VoIP architecture: H.323, SIP, and MGCP (Chapter 2). Step 2 Offer VoIP public network services (Chapters 3 and 4). Step 3 Design a network topology with quality of service (QoS) (Chapter 5). Step 4 Implement the telco switch/VoIP gateway trunk (Chapter 6). Step 5 Design and implement the VoIP gatekeeper and gateway (Chapter 7). Step 6 Implement security (Chapter 8). Step 7 Maintain an SLA (Chapter 9). Summary This chapter provided an overview of VoIP services and benefits in a service provider environment. The remaining chapters provide a discussion of the seven key steps that are required to implement VoIP services in a service provider network.
- 12. 14 Chapter 1: The Telephony Service Provider: An Overview As TDM voice traffic is replaced with VoIP voice traffic, some service providers are implementing a two-phase approach in migrating toward VoIP and displacing existing TDM networks. This approach presents the following possibilities: • VoIP networks will support trunking of voice calls across the core of the service provider’s network. • VoIP networks will extend from the core to the access loops to reach the individual subscriber. This phase has occurred with the use of xDSL and broadband cable technologies.