Cloud & Telecom Security

As an annual meeting, China VOIP Conference & EXPO, China FMC/IMS Summit, China Enterprise IP communication Solutions Conference had hold on 23~24th, May, Beijing. Check here for its official website. I like to share some highlights of this meeting.

1. Three kinds of VOIP tech in China
Following the steps of VOIP standard development, there are three kinds of VOIP networks in China.

# H.323
H.323 is ITU-T standard framework for multimedia service in Non-QoS guaranteed network. The main service providers in china all have their own H.323 network. China Unicom has the biggest H.323 network in the world providing both audio and video services. It covers almost the whole China, has more than 1800K gateways and carries one billion mintues calls every month. This may own to the original multi-layer GK network structure which greately improves the scalability of H.323.

# Softswitch
Softswitch is a next generation network infrastructure based on SIP, H.248 and other protocols proposed by IEEE and ITU-T. Now, all 17951 call of China mobile and more than one third long distance call of China Telecom are carried by softswitch. China Netcom has been using softswitch to replace the Class 4 switch since 2005. CRC(China Railway Communication CO..,Ltd.) and China Satcom (China Satellite Communication Corporation) also have their softswitch network.

# IMS
The first proposal by 3GPP Release 5, IMS(IP multimedia subsystem) has the advantage in providing mobile and multimedia service. It is also the most promising framework of fix and mobile Convergence. ETSI TISPAN and ITU-T began work on IMS infrastructure in the end of 2005. Thus, the main service providers in China are paying attention to IMS and deploying trial network of IMS now.

2. Whether to open the VOIP market

There have been much of debates on whether VOIP is a basic telecommunication service or a value-added service. As a basic telecommunication service, only six service providers got the VOIP licenses, but everyone knows there is a big underground VOIP market in China.

Why don’t we open the VOIP market?

On the FMC/IMS summit, Mr. Jiang Lingtao from MII pointed out the main concern of the government. Mr. Jiang said VOIP service provider should not only provide calls between two or more people, but also function as the infrastructure of social security. Thus, VOIP network must have the following capability:

• Emergency call (in China) : 119,110, 120, etc.
• Legal monitor(执法监听)
• Common service (普遍服务)

As we know all these are pending problems. So, probably they are reasons that the government has not decide to open the VOIP market, even everybody knows it’s a must.

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