Broadband News

ISPA Announces 2007 Award Finalists

• Tuesday, January 16, 2007 3:39 PM
• 14 comments

The Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA UK) has announced the finalists in the 2007 ISPA Awards. The finalists were selected on the basis of their performance in tests over three months by Epitiro.

The ISPA Awards aren't new to controversy, a bit like the Oscars. The newly introduced 'Best Internet Telephony' Award has caused some concern among VoIP operators, some of whom feel it is not testing the right metrics.

"The Best Internet Telephony Award short list is based on measuring against a VoIP service in the United States, rather than one operated by the entrants which is giving an indication of how good the finalists' broadband services and connectivity to the U.S. is, rather than how good their VoIP service is. We hope that next year ISPA will look to measure the performance of the UK VoIP services themselves, rather than just network performance."

Peter Gradwell, Managing Director - gradwell dot com Ltd.

The concern arises that whilst for example one of the finalists in this award is Entacall (www.entacall.com), the telecommunications arm of Entagroup, the tests which determined the finalists in this award only tested the performance of Entanet's broadband service for carrying "internet telephony traffic" to one specific destination rather than the performance of the Entacall phone service provided by Entanet. This in itself is a useful test to measure performance of third party VoIP services, however it is important to note that it does not measure the actual VoIP services provided by the companies up for the award.

ISPA strives to incorporate new technologies and developments in the Internet sector into it's annual awards. As regards the Best Internet Telephony category of The 2007 ISPAs, there are two stages of assessment.

Stage one assesses the performance of the entrant's network for carrying VoIP traffic. Epitiro conducted a variety of tests on the broadband lines submitted to the category to assess how well they managed SIP traffic. The testing that Epitiro carried out for the Internet Telephony Award focused on the ability of the entrant's network to carry real-time audio data as required by a VoIP call. An independent third party SIP provider was used to initiate the calls and then the audio traffic was routed over the ISPA entrants network. The results were then purely based on the quality of the audio (both upstream and downstream) during the call. Audio quality is measured using industry standard PESQ algorithms (Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality - ITU-T P.862.1) to compare the received audio against the transmitted reference audio.

The finalists for each category are selected based on the technical tests.

Stage two of the assessment is where the judges of the awards assess the value of the VoIP services of the five finalists, particularly the VoIP hardware and software offered by the entrant.

This is the first time ISPA has run this award, so we welcome constructive feedback on the assessment and criteria for the category. We have already identified that entrants should be briefed more effectively as to what the category assesses. As with any new award category, it takes time, trial and constructive feedback to attain the most appropriate assessment process.

ISPA Spokesman

ISPA has over time shown a great willingness to adapt its awards to changing trends with a great focus on broadband services in the current awards. The addition of a VoIP/Internet Telephony award is very welcome and we hope in future years it will grow to incorporate consumer and business VoIP services as this area of the Internet Services market continues to grow.

The award ceremony will take place on 15 February 2007 at the London Mariott Hotel in Grosvenor Square.

Sebastien Lahtinen

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