Thanks, SteveG.,
The Bay SS7 story serves to make a very important point, I feel. See another similar story following this post re: Ascend and HP hooking up to facilitate SS7 capabilities: "Ascend and HP Announce Integration for Data and Telephony Networks."
The implications of formally integrating SS7 hooks in the Internet model are profound in many ways. It will undoubtedly bring chagrin and horror to some within the IETF who still have not gotten over the shock of having to deal with ATM in various RFCs, and the veteran Internet Society folks who are still protesting the use of the 'net outside of universities and the nation's leading bastions of R&D.
Upon first reading the ITMC/ITU VoIP draft last year, the omission of SS7 cried out like a cat in heat. Its being introduced as an RFC at this time reaffirms its significance.
It does not come without consequences, however, for those sibling ITSPs who could make full use of it quickly, or once it is ratified and put to use. For one thing, in order for a carrier to access a provider's SS7 cloud through what are known as A-Links, _normally_ , they need to have a carrier identification code or CIC code. As such, they are also at the same time entering the domain of legitimate carrier status (which requires legal work on their part), as opposed to owning appendages that hang off of LEC machines and PBXs in the form of protocol gateways. And the plot thickens from there. because it raises the almost certain spectre of being counted as an Interexchange Carrier, and all that that implies with respect to access charges and universal service fund obligations under the present structure. See what I mean? It's almost as though the establishment has a means of taking care of its own built into the model.
As soon as a carrier begins to do look-ahead call mapping through the use of SS7 surveillance, and homes in on an available port in a distant location, or accesses an 800 data base in an SCP, or call-redirecting as in follow-me services, they are admitting that they are a legitimate form of interexchange, no matter what the intermediate medium (in this case the Internet) happens to be. At that point they no longer are a tie line company, but have entered into the world of Intelligent Networking (IN or AIN) long distance services.
There will surely be workarounds to this, and I can begin to envisage them already. These will be challenged by the dominant carriers, unless the latter choose to emulate them instead, and thereby elect to join the folly. (Does this remind you of what USWest and Qwest have done recently?)
Other alternatives to gain access to the LECs' databases and the long distance 800 repositories could be contrived through the use of DNS and LDAP, maneuvering against a separately created database to emulate the same kinds of capabilities afforded by SS7, thus obviating the need for it altogether, down the road. But I find these to be very unlikely solutions in the near term, except for closed communities of users, as exist in enterprise networks. But these are only my humble opinions.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
