IP telephony in Japan
In Japan, IP telephony is regarded as a service applied by VoIP technology to the whole or a part of the telephone line. As of 2003, IP telephony services have been assigned telephone numbers. IP telephony services also often include videophone/video conferencing services. According to the Telecommunication Business Law, the service category for IP telephony also implies the service provided via Internet, which is not assigned any telephone number.IP telephony is basically regulated by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) as a telecommunication service. The operators have to disclose necessary information on its quality, etc., prior to making contracts with customers, and have an obligation to respond to their complaints cordially.
Many Japanese Internet service providers (ISP) are including IP telephony services. An ISP who also provides IP telephony service is known as a "ITSP (Internet Telephony Service Provider)". Recently, the competition among ITSPs has been activated, by option or set sales, in connection with ADSL or FTTH services.
The tariff system normally applied to Japanese IP telephony is described below;
- A call between IP telephony subscribers, limited to the same group, is usually free of charge.
- A call from IP telephony subscribers to a fixed line or PHS is usually a uniformly fixed rate all over the country.
- Where the IP telephony is assigned normal telephone number (0AB-J), the condition for its interconnection is considered same as normal telephony.
- Where the IP telephony is assigned specific telephone number (050), the condition for its interconnection is described below;
- Interconnection is sometimes charged. (Sometimes, it is free of charge.) In case of free-of-charge, mostly, communication traffic is exchanged via a P2P connection with the same VoIP standard. Otherwise, certain conversions are needed at the point of the VoIP gateway which incurs operating costs.
High-quality IP telephony is assigned a telephone number, normally starting with the digits 050. When VoIP quality is so high that a customer has difficulty telling the difference between it and a normal telephone, and when the provider relates its number with a location and provides the connection with emergency call capabilities, the provider is allowed to assign a normal telephone number, which is a so-called "0AB-J" number.
Voice over IP can be used together with static IP addresses so that one can talk to any computer just the way one uses internet, but instead he can access IP-address as definitive unique 'Internet VoIP'-phone number...
Historical milestones
- 1974 – The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) published a paper titled "A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection."[52]
- 1981 – IPv4 is described in RFC 791.
- 1985 – The National Science Foundation commissions the creation of NSFNET.[53]
- 1995 – VocalTec releases the first commercial Internet phone software.[54][55]
- 1996 –
- ITU-T begins development of standards for the transmission and signaling of voice communications over Internet Protocol networks with the H.323 standard.[56]
- US telecommunication companies petition the US Congress to ban Internet phone technology.[57]
- 1997 – Level 3 began development of its first softswitch, a term they coined in 1998.[58]
- 1999 –
- The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) specification RFC 2543 is released.[59]
- Mark Spencer of Digium develops the first open source Private branch exchange (PBX) software (Asterisk).[60]
- 2004 – Commercial VoIP service providers proliferate.[3]
