About SIP


The hundred year old telecommunications industry is undergoing a fundamental and highly disruptive transition. Antiquated, voice-centric, "circuit-switched" networks are giving way to digital, Internet Protocol (IP) based packet networks that enable the swift, efficient delivery of voice, video and data services in a ubiquitous manner to end users, anytime and anywhere.
This is reshaping the industry's overall structure, and opening the door to a new set of companies that bring an Internet-centric approach to delivering innovation within the $2.1 trillion worldwide telecommunications industry.

Invented in the late 1990s, the Session Initiation Protocol has risen within the Internet community to become the critical enabler for delivering real-time communications over IP networks. As Vinton Cerf has been quoted, SIP "is the next great protocol of the Internet, after TCP/IP and HTTP." (For a SIP tutorial, click here).
Over the past several years, the Voice over IP community has adopted SIP as its signaling protocol of choice. Numerous service providers are offering SIP-based Voice over IP services, like AT&T, MCI and Vonage. The major PBX manufacturers have declared support for SIP-based IP phones, including Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, and Nortel. Microsoft has standardized around SIP for its real time collaboration, presence and messaging software products.
Finally, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) chose SIP as the fundamental signaling protocol to deliver voice, video and data services over emerging mobile 3G networks.



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