The biggest question of all, however, is the impact the Internet Protocol as a voice transmission technology will have on the future of the telecommunications industry. While industry experts are in almost unanimous agreement that IP will be the foundation for the next generation of voice and data services, little consensus exists over the roadmap that IP will follow to reach the promised land. Literally dozens of protocols have been introduced for governing the convergence of the voice and data network. We don't think there will be a single winner. Instead of waging a war between advocates of protocols that accomplish roughly the same thing or perform complementary functions, Bursin and others are calling for efforts to focus on smoothing out the interface junctions between the various protocols.
Efforts are afoot to settle on a common API for the VoIP industry.
The war between standards will be won, he says, by what tools are available, flexible and useful enough for the customer. The objective of the new development environment, DTI officials say, is to make the creation of next-generation applications as simple as Web page design. Until the user community has established a defacto standard, however, advocates of competing protocols will continue to muddle toward coexistence. The group itself represents a reconciliation of sorts between warring factions. Despite the collaboration efforts, the two camps continue to butt heads, as H.323 backers look to leverage the protocol's lead on SIP in terms of deployment at the interior of most of the world's IP voice networks.