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The telecommunications space is at once a very large, even intimidating industry to cover, and a small one, where leaders who share an interest in technology keep tabs on multiple market segments, read and comment on one another’s blogs and attend many of the same trade shows and events, including the ITEXPO.

 

So it didn’t surprise us when, responding to a question about his other interests in the field, a new advisory board member of London-based XConnect uttered these interesting words during an interview today: “We have seen more innovation in mobile handset technology in the last 18 months then we’ve seen in the PC industry in the last 15 years.”

 

Meet Richard Shockey (News - Alert), a Washington, D.C. area-based VoIP veteran and pioneer in Electronic NUMbering, or “ENUM” technology (the protocol that enables routing of IP-based calls and services using telephone numbers) who today joins the peering and interconnection services provider in an advisory role.

 

XConnect – which recently offered members new options that increase their ability to benefit from VoIP and a handful of next-gen technologies – adds the know-how of an active professional in Shockey, who founded the Internet Engineering Task Force ENUM Working Group in 2002, co-chairs a new IETF group that focuses on provisioning data for VoIP/NGN peering federations, and serves member of the board of directors and technical working group co-chair of the SIP Forum (News - Alert).

 

As we learned in our interview, Shockey views ENUM as the new query protocol for NGN networks and believes that –from a standards perspective – the technology is “baked.” Certainly XConnect, whose registries rely on ENUM for its peering and federation infrastructure, will benefit from Shockey’s extensive experience in the field.

 

The company says Shockey will help it stay at the forefront of VoIP peering.

 

We spoke to him about the technology’s future and discussed his other interests in telecom (make sure you read to the end if you’re at all interested in the persistent rumors of Apple’s pursuit of a netbook or large-size iPod Touch).

 

Our exchange follows.

 

 

Richard Shockey (pictured left): My involvement with SIP-based VoIP and ENUM in particular goes back to the earliest days of the protocol itself in the late 1990s. That long involvement in the industry will help me guide XConnect as it builds on its leadership in carrier ENUM and federation-based interconnection.

 

 

RS: If by “voice peering,” you mean all-IP interconnection of intercarrier voice traffic, all the standards are in place and it just works. The largest issue right now is the cutbacks in capital spending, but there is a rational argument to service providers that if you spend X dollars in CAPEX today, you can gain XX in OPEX (News - Alert) cost savings. That business proposition is resonating more and more with the carriers I’ve spoken to recently and also hits the sweet spot in XConnect’s business model.

 

 

RS: Policy-driven interconnection and peering is what service providers are demanding right now.

 

That’s why we need to be careful about the use of the term peering. “Peering” in an IP context has typically meant settlement-free. But when it comes to voice, IP interconnection does not necessarily mean money will not change hands. There are transit providers that will always price their services. Even IP data interconnection is not all “bill and keep.” Service providers need to keep the “peering” term flexible and broad enough to include settlement arrangements, where they make sense. That’s why “interconnection” might be a better term to use.

 

 

RS: From a standards perspective, ENUM is pretty baked. The ENUM Working Group in the IETF is slowing down its activities; ENUM works and is effectively the new query protocol for NGN networks. It’s being driven by the desire of carriers to rip SS7 and TCAP out of their core networks. The Service Control Points in TDM carrier networks will now be IP-SCPs, based on ENUM.

 

In fact, it’s not well known, but every MMS message in North America has to use an ENUM database to find the terminating carrier. This is already tens of millions of queries a day.

 

The good news is that once the legacy TDM infrastructure is ripped out, carriers can start do some interesting things, like offer high-quality, end-to-end voice. It’s almost shameful to think that we have to depend on such terrible codecs, like G.711 and G.729, when we have better engineered alternatives on IP networks. Think of Skype, for instance.

 

 

RS: Well, the story these days in telecom is mobility and the revolution in mobile handsets like the iPhone. We have seen more innovation in mobile handset technology in the last 18 months then we’ve seen in the PC industry in the last 15 years. It’s pretty amazing. I’ve got large bets that Apple (News - Alert) will do a tablet-style device this year and it will look like a big iPod touch with a 9-inch-plus diagonal screen. I was frankly amazed at the market acceptance of Amazon’s Kindle, but I’m a believer now.

 

Also on my horizon: real-time video on handsets. You see a new, second camera on the Nokia (News - Alert) N 97 devices now facing the user for mobile video calling, and that’s the beginning; that’s a real “killer app” for mobile operators. That is the classic kind of IP application that derives ARPU for carriers, needs ENUM to work, and needs XConnect to bridge from carrier to carrier.