A press release of September 2, 1998, announced that the industry leaders 3Com Corporation, Cisco, GRIC Communications, iPass, and TransNexus had "teamed up to promote inter-domain authentication, authorization and accounting standards for IP telephony through the Open Settlement Protocol (OSP)." The Open Settlement Protocol is being developed under the authority of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute's (ETSI) project TIPHON, Telecommunications and Internet Protocol Harmonization Over Networks. The TIPHON project objective is "to support the market for voice communication and related voiceband communication (such asfacsimile) between users . . . [to] ensure that users connected to IP based networks can communicate with users in Switched Circuit Networks (such as PSTN /ISDN and GSM), and vice versa." One of the benefits of the new Open Settlement Protocol is 'flexible and feature rich information exchange via the Extensible Markup Language (XML).' The message system defined in the protocol architecture uses HTTP to communicate the principal message content; this includes a MIME header together with the XML document in a <Message>.
A provisional (draft, not official) version of the Open Settlement Protocol may be found in the document Telecommunications and Internet Protocol Harmonization Over Networks (TIPHON): Inter-domain pricing, authorisation, and usage exchange = ETSI DTS/TIPHON-03004 V1.3.0 (1998-09). The document's statement of scope: "This document specifies a set of protocols and associated profiles to permit the exchange of inter-domain pricing, authorisation, and settlement information between internet telephony operators. The protocols specified fulfil the essential requirements of such services, by providing appropriate functionality between multiple administrative domains in a secure manner. The specification also provides for non-standard extensions that permit co-operating parties to augment or replace the basic functionality." Section 6 ('XML Content') "specifies the actual message format used to exchange pricing, authentication and authorisation, and usage information. It outlines the overall XML document structure, lists the individual XML elements, and describes how those elements are combined into exchanges." XML element and attribute declarations in this section define the provisional DTD for the Open Settlement Protocol in this draft version.
A revised/corrected version of the TIPHON document cited above is: Telecommunications and Internet Protocol Harmonization Over Networks (TIPHON): Inter-domain pricing, authorisation, and usage exchange = ETSI DTS/TIPHON-03004 V1.4.0 (1998-09). Dated 1998-08-28. It contains revisions based upon TIPHON 9 TD50.
The root as given:
<!DOCTYPE Message [
<!ELEMENT Message ( ( PricingIndication | PricingConfirmation
| AuthorisationRequest | AuthorisationResponse
| AuthorisationIndication | AuthorisationConfirmation
| UsageIndication | UsageConfirmation | ReauthorisationRequest
| ReauthorisationResponse )+ ) >
...
]>
Note that the approved version of this document (1.4.1) has not yet been made public.
Links:
[September 10, 1998] Version 1.4.0 ETSI DTS/TIPHON-03004 V1.3.0 (1998-09) from Working Group 3. Dated 1998-08-28.
Version 1.3.0 - ETSI DTS/TIPHON-03004 V1.3.0 (1998-09) from Working Group 3. See the previous item.
Telecommunications and Internet Protocol Harmonization Over Networks (TIPHON) Release 4: Open Settlement Protocol (OSP) for Inter-Domain Pricing, Authorization and Usage Exchange. ETSI Technical Specification 101 321 V4.1.1 (2003-11). 110 pages. Section 6 'XML content' contains the clause which "specifies the actual message format used by the OSP to exchange pricing, authentication and authorization, and usage information. It outlines the overall XML document structure, lists the individual XML elements, and describes how those elements are combined into exchanges." [cache]
The application/osp-token MIME type. The Open Settlement Protocol (OSP), an open standard from the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, specifies a means by which IP telephony equipment in one administrative domain may request access to IP telephony equipment (including, but not limited to: Gateways, Proxy Servers, Gatekeepers, etc.) in another administrative domain. OSP grants such access by returning authorization tokens, which must then be passed to the destination IP telephony device during call signaling. In order to support access control via OSP, IP telephony signaling protocols must be capable of carrying these authorization tokens in an interoperable way. This memo defines just such a method for protocols, such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), that can support carriage of MIME types during call signaling. This memo conforms to the requirements for MIME type registration defined in RFC 2048.
[September 03, 1998] Press release: "Industry Leaders Advance IP Telephony Standard. 3Com, Cisco, GRIC, iPass, and TransNexus agree to support the Open Settlement Protocol." - "Industry leaders 3Com Corporation, Cisco, GRIC Communications, iPass, and TransNexus have teamed up to promote inter-domain authentication, authorization and accounting standards for IP telephony through the Open Settlement Protocol (OSP). OSP includes a "flexible and feature rich information exchange via eXtensible Markup Language (XML)." Also - equivalent press release from Cisco.
[September 08, 1998] "Vendor Support Moves IP Telephony Standard." By Laura Kujubu and Stephen Lawson. In InfoWorld [Electric] (September 8, 1998). Posted at 8:02 AM PT. According to Jim Dalton, CEO and president of TransNexus in Atlanta, "the main benefits of OSP include it confidentiality of information via Secure Sockets Layer encryption; secure, mutual authentication of communicating parties through public and private key cryptography methods; nonrepudiation of all communications through digital signature technology, so that, for example, a receiving party has verification that another party used their network; and information exchange via Extensible Markup Language. . . Other key players such as Lucent Technologies and Northern Telecom expressed interest and support of IP telephony standards in general but are still evaluating OSP, company representatives said. But others such as Ascend Communications, GTE, AT&T, and Internet Telephony Exchange Carrier (ITXC) - although not part of the formal OSP announcement made this month - expressed their support. Sprint and MCI WorldCom were unavailable for comment."
Or: "Vendors Back IP Telephony Spec. OSP Provides IP Telephony `Settlement' Information." By Laura Kujubu and Stephen Lawson. In InfoWorld Volume 20, Issue 37 (September 14, 1998), page 37.
