SIP over Everything

A few weeks ago, I was insulted by an analyst who was clearly part of the wireless world. His insights about wireless technologies were insightful. His understanding of the Internet was clearly dismissive.

 

Yet here we are, where all the future growth of the wireless has become dependent on the Internet. The real questions to be asked are not how wireless will be deployed, but how it will take advantage of the Internet to provide seamless ubiquity.

 

The funny thing is the standards bodies of 3GPP and IEEE have good people that understand this is the ultimate objective. At the 4GWE Conference – collocated with ITEXPO East 2010 and held Jan. 20 to 22 in Miami – this is the point of what we look at as we focus on the massively mobile world.

 

It’s an inclusive experience. We have sensors, humans and applications all converging on the network looking to communicate, entertain and inform. This goes way beyond today’s handsets.

SIP at its core, is part of this mix. At its conception it was designed to support the transporting of media, be it thin, fat, rich or text, human or something else. So, the M2M Evolution Conference that is part of our 4GWE / ITEXPO experience is a logical extension.

 

Not surprisingly, SIP has ended up in a variety of vertical applications that may include areas such as transportation, medicine, government (video surveillance) and, of course, energy.

 

The SIP forum is now looking at its role in the delivery of smart grid information.

 

It occurred to me that meter systems could be used by a Virtual Power Operator to enable a secondary market. Perhaps then the role of SIP is to provide the arbitrage that VoIP did to telecom for power. The use of wireless metering could even make a national service out of the regional power operators.

 

Regardless of that outcome, SIP has become the standard for people to look and talk on almost every device they are using and carrying.

 

More importantly, it’s the standard for people who don’t want a standard. Proprietary systems use SIP as the gateway to their networks, and that is being evidenced by solutions in SIP trunking and Skype In/Out services. SIP gateways are also a strategy for developers on the Web to talk to the PSTN.