The SIP Forum announces it will host the third annual SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC 2013), an educational conference focused on the challenges and opportunities of deploying SIP-based carrier services worldwide. Building on the success of past conferences, this year the SIP Forum will add an extra day of special workshops and sessions, designed to educate service provider technical staff on best practices and strategies for the successful implementation of SIP-based services and applications.

SIPNOC 2013 will be held at the Hyatt Dulles Hotel in Herndon, Va., from April 22-25, 2013, and will continue its practice of providing leading technical and operations personnel from the global carrier community with educational, non-commercial and technical content focused on the real-world challenges of deploying SIP services in global IP networks.

Early bird registration is available at http://www.regonline.com/sipnoc2013. More details about SIPNOC 2013 are available on its conference website at http://www.sipnoc.org.

"The growth and acceleration of SIP services within the international service provider community - and the accompanying technological, logistical and businesses challenges - was the original impetus behind SIPNOC and remains our guiding motivation," SIP Forum Chairman Richard Shockey said. "We're pleased to bring this unique gathering for the network operator community back for a third year, once again providing a non-commercial, technically-oriented setting for discussing and sharing ideas and knowledge about SIP implementation."

SIPNOC 2013 will once again bring together communications industry leaders to learn, discuss and formulate new ideas and strategies to address the challenges and opportunities for SIP-based carrier services in fixed and mobile IP network environments. The conference, which is designed specifically for SIP network operations personnel and engineering staff, will feature well-known industry speakers and a number of highly technical educational and instructional panels and sessions. The SIP Forum will also host networking events at the conference and offer a series of informal "Birds of a Feather" sessions, which encourage discussion on a variety of topics in hallways, available meeting rooms and break-out areas.

"SIPNOC demonstrates the SIP Forum's ongoing commitment to serving as the industry's non-commercial think tank for international SIP interoperability and deployment," said Marc Robins, President and Managing Director of the SIP Forum. "Our third annual conference will expand upon key issues identified in previous discussions and through our SIP Forum Task Groups, with the aim of delivering high-level technical support and guidance to the broad service provider community worldwide."

SIPNOC 2013 will build on critical themes discussed at past events, including: application development and testing; SIP trunking interoperability and the SIP Forum's SIPconnect 1.1 technical specification; Fax over Internet Protocol (FoIP) interworking; implementing SIP over IPv6; user-agent configuration; emergency services; policy servers; security; operational issues; call routing and peering; troubleshooting and monitoring; SIP Interconnection; HD-Voice Deployment Challenges; and Video interop issues.

"SIPNOC is an international gathering where communications engineers and network professionals can discuss and troubleshoot the real-world intricacies of working with SIP every day," Robins added. "We expect this year's conference to build on our past successes, and explore new complexities as we strive together, as a community, to deploy SIP-based services in diverse network environments worldwide."

Attendees at SIPNOC 2013 will include telecommunications providers, major backbone operators, interconnect and wholesale solution providers, ISPs, ITSPs (Internet Telephony Service Providers), cable operators and wireless network operators, as well as large enterprises deploying major SIP initiatives. Industry stakeholders - such as network equipment vendors, government agency representatives and academic research organizations - are also encouraged to attend.

The SIP Forum enjoys an international reputation for developing key educational events around SIP deployment. The organization's SIPit series of interoperability testing events regularly provides a test bed for SIP-based applications and equipment and has been heralded as critical for the development of new products and services in the industry. The SIP Forum is also home to committees and task groups comprised of industry experts examining a myriad of SIP-related topics, including the use of SIP with FoIP, video, SIP over IPv6 and user-agent configuration. SIPNOC 2013 Corporate Sponsorship Opportunities