SAN JOSE--The U.S. cable industry is close to creating a national VoIP peering network, according to multiple sources at Spring VON 2007.

CableLabs, the research consortia of the U.S. cable industry, has been exploring options for a national peering fabric since it first issued an RFI in November 2005. Last October, a much more specific RFP came out.

“They need a registry that enables them to complete calls between and among cable operators,” said Dennis Brouwer, senior director, IP products and services at Neustar, which operates a VoIP peering fabric. As cable VoIP penetration increases, there is tremendous financial incentive for cable companies to directly connect their VoIP services so they don’t have to traverse the PSTN, for which they have to pay termination charges to their rivals, the local phone companies, he explained.

“The cable industry is definitely on the leading edge of the industry on this,” he said.

Global Crossing, which began developing ENUM capability internally last year, has been talking with major cable players, said Al DiGabriele, vice president of product management for voice services.

“We see a lot of interest from cable, and we have talked to most of the major cable companies about peering,” he said. “What they want is almost like a cable extranet--it keeps all the cable VoIP calls to other cable subscribers ‘on-net.’”

The business case for VoIP peering is much clearer for cable than for CLECs or other voice players because there is no revenue trade-off, DiGabriele said.

“A CLEC has to wonder how much they will lose in reciprocal compensation,” he said.

Because they get paid for as well as pay for voice termination services, they have to consider what they lose as well as what they gain by peering. For cable, it’s a win-win situation--they save money and they take back revenue from their rivals.

“Cable companies are progressing farther and faster,” to adopt peering, agrees Gary Richenaker, chief architect at Bellcore and chairman of the ENUM Forum, at a VON roundtable.

A national cable peering community “creates a new center of gravity” for peering, said Neustar’s Brouwer. “To the extent they agree to play together, they have collective appeal to other potential players. For example, they would be a very attractive partner for mobile providers. The first goal is to create a cable community, but the next community of interest could be to expand into mobile providers.”