5.3 Standards Bodies

As it is of great importance to the industry to establish appropriate common interfaces, a number of the main standards groups are active in areas relevant to VoIP. While it has often been said that the great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from, the greater the number of competing protocols, the less likely it is that end-to-end services can be provided at scale. The cost of developing both equipment and services will also be higher where a multiplicity of protocols offering much the same functionality have to be supported. It is therefore important to appreciate the work of each standards initiative and its role relative to others. In practice, there are two types of standards-related organisation formal standards bodies and industry groups. The main ones relevant to the VoIP industry are described in the remainder of this chapter.