Page 346 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

The cultural differences are obvious. Telecommunications technologies tend to be
closed, confusing, and expensive, while networking technologies are generally open,
well-documented, and competitive.

Closed Thinking

If one compares the culture of the telecommunications industry to that of the Internet,
it is sometimes difficult to believe the two are related. The Internet was designed by
enthusiasts, whereas contributing to the development of the PSTN is impossible for
any individual to contemplate. This is an exclusive club; membership is not open to
just anyone. *
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) clearly exhibits this type of closed
thinking. If you want access to its knowledge, you have to be prepared to pay for it.
Membership requires proof of your qualifications, and you will be expected to pay
thousands of dollars to gain access to its library of publications.
Although the ITU is the United Nations’s sanctioned body responsible for international
telecommunications, many of the VoIP protocols (SIP, MGCP, RTP, STUN) come not
from the hallowed halls of the ITU, but rather from the IETF (which publishes all of
its standards free to all, and allows anyone to submit an Internet Draft for
consideration).
Open protocols such as SIP may have a tactical advantage over ITU protocols, such as
H.323, due to the ease with which one can obtain them. Although H.323 is widely
deployed by carriers as a VoIP protocol in the backbone, it is much more difficult to
find H.323-based endpoints; newer products are far more likely to support SIP.
The success of the IETF’s open approach has not gone unnoticed by the mighty ITU.
It has recently become possible to download up to three documents free of charge from
†
the ITU web site. Openness is clearly on its minds. Recent statements by the ITU sug-
gest that there is a desire to achieve “Greater participation in ITU by civil society and
the academic world.” Mr. Houlin Zhao, the ITU’s Director of the Telecommunication
Standardization Bureau (TSB), believes that “ITU should take some steps to encourage
this.” ‡
The roadmap to achieving this openness is unclear, but the ITU is beginning to realize
the inevitable.

* Contrast this with the IETF’s membership page, which states: “The IETF is not a membership organization
(no cards, no dues, no secret handshakes :-)... It is open to any interested individual... Welcome to the IETF.”
Talk about community!
† Considering the thousands of documents available, and the fact that each document generally contains
references to dozens more, the value of this free information is difficult to judge.
‡ http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/tsb-director/itut-wsis/files/wg-wsis-Zhao-rev1.pdf

318 | Chapter 15: Asterisk: The Future of Telephony