Internet Telephony Services Providers’ Association

Last updated

The Internet Telephony Service Providers Association (ITSPA) is a British body representing providers of Internet Telephony services (VoIP).

Contents

History

Officially launched in December 2004, its existing founder members are Gradwell Dotcom Ltd, Magrathea Telecommunications Limited, Telappliant, Timico Ltd, Voicenet Solutions Ltd, Voipfone and XConnect [1] and corporate members such as BT and Gamma. ITSPA aims to promote competition and self-regulation in order to encourage the development of a flourishing and innovative VoIP industry.

Activities

As a trade association, membership is voluntary but the companies who choose to become members agree to abide by the ITSPA code of practice.

ITSPA's main activity is in making representations on behalf of the industry to Government bodies, such as the Home Office, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (former DTI) and Ofcom.

Quality Mark

The enhanced version of the Quality Mark was introduced in 2016 [2]

Members of ITSPA can apply for the Quality Mark, which ensures that consumers are guaranteed that the certified organisation complies with the following points

  1. Adherence to the ITSPA Code of Practice and Best Practice Guidance documents
  2. Evidence that their platform design is resilient and that they deliver a reliable service, which will be measured by ITSPA as 99.99% availability between 8am & 8pm Monday-Friday, using the VoIP Spear monitoring platform.
  3. Transparent porting arrangements.
  4. Active fraud control measures.
  5. Evidence of access to the emergency services.
  6. Easy to find information on complaints & dispute resolution.
  7. Policies in place for Nuisance Calls & CLI Presentation.
  8. Evidence of Data Protection & Retention Compliance.
  9. Evidence of their Single Point of Contact showing that there is an easy way to contact the member with issues arising.

The first VoIP providers to gain the enhanced Quality Mark were: [3]

Regulation

Policies are agreed by the ITSPA Council (on advice from the Industry Developments Working Group), a body of up to ten people selected from and representing the various interests of the membership. The Council is served by a secretariat.

ITSPA Awards

Now into its 5th year, the 2013 ITSPA Awards were held on Wednesday 6 March 2013. There are now eight award categories which provide the opportunity for all companies involved in IP telephony (whether it be a service provider, wholesaler or vendor) to participate. [4]

2013 Award Winners

  1. Best Consumer VoIP - Localphone
  2. Best Business ITSP (Small Enterprise) - Voipfone
  3. Best Business ITSP (Medium Enterprise) - Telappliant
  4. Best Business ITSP (Corporate) - Ciptex
  5. Best VoIP CPE - Sangoma Technologies – NetBorder Lync Express
  6. Best VoIP Infrastructure - Metaswitch Networks – Perimeta 3.3
  7. Most Innovative VoIP Product - Voxhub – Voxtop Apps Platform
  8. ITSPA Members’ Pick - Mark Spencer (computer engineer) for developing Asterisk (PBX)

Highly Commended

  1. Best Consumer VoIP: BT Group
  2. Best Business ITSP (Small Enterprise): VoiceHost
  3. Best Business ITSP (Medium Enterprise): Voxhub
  4. Best Business ITSP (Corporate): Timico
  5. Best VoIP CPE: Grandstream Networks – GXP2200 Enterprise Application Phone for Android™
  6. Best VoIP Infrastructure: Genband – GENBAND Web Application Manager (WAM)
  7. Most Innovative VoIP Product/Service: Alcatel-Lucent – OpenTouch Conversation

See also

Related Research Articles

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet telephony, broadband telephony, and broadband phone service specifically refer to the provisioning of communications services over the public Internet, rather than via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), also known as plain old telephone service (POTS).

Vonage is a publicly held business cloud communications provider. Headquartered in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, the company was founded in 2001 as a provider of residential telecommunications services based on voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Digium, Inc., a communications technology company based in Huntsville, Alabama, is a subsidiary of Sangoma Technologies. In 1999, Digium's founder Mark Spencer created Asterisk, the open source software project that can be used to turn a personal computer into a communications server or Voice over IP (VoIP) phone system. Today, Digium's core business lines include Switchvox, the Asterisk-based VoIP business phone system, Digium IP phones, and Asterisk telephony software and hardware products. Digium continues to make Asterisk available to the global development community for free at Asterisk.org.

An Internet telephony service provider (ITSP) offers digital telecommunications services based on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) that are provisioned via the Internet.

The Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) is a British body representing providers of Internet services.

VocalTec Israeli telecom equipment provider

VocalTec Communications Inc. is an Israeli telecom equipment provider. The company was founded in 1985 by Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty, who patented the first Voice over IP audio transceiver. VocalTec has supplied major customers such as Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, and many others.

Origination in VOIP telephony refers to calls that originate in the PSTN public switched telephone network and are carried to their destination over the Internet.

Ooma consumer telecommunications company

Ooma, Inc., or Ooma, is an American publicly traded consumer telecommunications company based in the Silicon Valley, California area. Ooma offers Voice over IP (VoIP) calling using an Internet connection to support a range of communications solutions for small business, home and mobile users. In 2015, Ooma was named one of the fastest-growing private companies by Silicon Valley Business Journal.

Founded in 2002, Grandstream Networks is a manufacturer of IP voice and video communications equipment, video surveillance, gateways and analog telephone adapters (ATAs), and Asterisk-based IP-PBX appliances. Grandstream supplies small and medium businesses and consumers with open-standard SIP-based products.

TouchWave, Inc., was a privately held Palo Alto, California IP-telephony network switch provider founded in 1997. TouchWave developed a product line called WebSwitch that was designed to replace traditional private telephone exchange systems in small-to-medium-sized companies. WebSwitch was part of a phone system that incorporates communication features provided by the Internet. The rapid success of TouchWave was memorialized with awards and an acquisition by Ericsson Communications for $46M two years after TouchWave was founded. Ericsson continued the TouchWave product line under the name WebCom, but its efforts have been viewed as less than successful.

Iristel is a Canadian provider of Voice over Internet Protocol services, and is designated as a competitive local exchange carrier. The company was founded in 1999, and is headquartered in Markham, Ontario, Canada.

AudioCodes vendor of advanced voice networking and media processing solutions for the digital workplace

AudioCodes Ltd. is a vendor of advanced voice networking and media processing solutions for the digital workplace. The company designs, develops and sells products, solutions and services to enable enterprises and service providers to build and operate all-IP voice networks for unified communications (UC), contact centers and hosted business services.

Cloud communications are Internet-based voice and data communications where telecommunications applications, switching and storage are hosted by a third-party outside of the organization using them, and they are accessed over the public Internet. Cloud services is a broad term, referring primarily to data-center-hosted services that are run and accessed over an Internet infrastructure. Until recently, these services have been data-centric, but with the evolution of VoIP, voice has become part of the cloud phenomenon. Cloud telephony refers specifically to voice services and more specifically the replacement of conventional business telephone equipment, such as a private branch exchange (PBX), with third-party VoIP service.

InPhonex is a global telecommunications firm offering telephony services in more than 150 countries. Miami-based InPhonex serves communications service providers, businesses of all sizes, value-added resellers (VARs) and consumers, under its own and other brands. Offerings include multiple applications, services and utilities, such as VoIP, hosted PBX, SIP trunking, product creation and provisioning.

SIP trunking enables the end point’s PBX to send and receive calls via the Internet. As SIP is applied for the signalling protocol for multiple real-time application, SIP trunk is able to control voice, video and messaging applications. It is also a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology and streaming media service based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) by which Internet telephony service providers (ITSPs) deliver telephone services and unified communications to customers equipped with SIP-based IP PBX and unified communications facilities. Most unified communications applications provide voice, video, and other streaming media applications such as desktop sharing, web conferencing, and shared whiteboard.

VaxTele SIP Server SDK is a complete development toolkit, which allows software vendors and Internet telephony service providers (ITSP) to develop SIP Server and (SIP) Session Initiation Protocol based VoIP systems for Microsoft Windows to install computer to computer voice chat, chat rooms, IVR systems, call center services, calling card services, dial/receive computer to PSTN and mobile phone calling services.

GENBAND US LLC was a privately held company that makes IP-based real time communications software products for fixed wireline, mobile, and cable service providers as well as large enterprises. The company was formed in 1999 as General Bandwidth, and is headquartered in Frisco, Texas. In the following 15 years it acquired several other companies doing related work.

Federated VoIP is a form of packetized voice telephony that uses voice over IP between autonomous domains in the public Internet without the deployment of central virtual exchange points or switching centers for traffic routing. Federated VoIP uses decentralized addressing systems, such as ENUM, for location and identity information of participants and implements secure, trusted communications (TLS) for identify verification.

VoiceHost

VoiceHost is a UK (Norwich) based Internet Telephone Service (VoIP) which was founded in 2006.

Ribbon Communications US LLC is a publicly-traded company (NASDAQ:RBBN) that makes IP-based real time communications security and software solutions and products for fixed wireline, mobile, and cable service providers as well as large enterprises. The company was formed in 2017, following the merger of GENBAND and Sonus Networks and is headquartered in Westford, Massachusetts.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.itspa.org.uk/members.shtml
  2. ↑ Maradan, Romain (2016-04-12). "ITSPA Quality Mark". Gradwell. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
  3. ↑ "Quality Mark - ITSPA". ITSPA. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
  4. ↑ "The 2013 ITSPA Awards". ITSPA. Retrieved 29 October 2012.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.