Here's an interesting interview a friend pointed out while I was in the midst of moving. The title of the post alone is enough to make it worth a read. Nice to see another voice saying that telephony (I'd prefer to say voice services) is just another Internet application.

"Telephony is just yet another Internet application." MySQL talks with Juha Heinänen.

During 2008 we are planning to run a series of interviews with interesting persons somehow related to the telecom field. In this first installment, we will have a chat with Juha Heinänen from Finland.

MySQL: Juha, you are a former professor of Computer Science and Communication technology, CTO (or similar positions) in at least Sonera, Telia and Song, former ATM specialist, responsible for bringing Internet to Finland and registering the .fi top-level domain, a consultant for many early network equipment startups some of which succeeded to be still with us today, and author of several RFC's. Nowadays you are a core contributor to the OpenSER SIP proxy, and you sell a VoIP platform called OpenSIPg based on that to Nordic operators. In addition you seem to live a life that would likely be a dream of many hackers, spending time in different parts of the world hacking on your favorite Open Source project. Even to this date, I don't think we've ever met in person.

MySQL: For many years now you have been working with the SIP protocol and OpenSER SIP Proxy. When did you first turn your eye to SIP and why did you become
interested in it?

JH: When working for Song Networks (now TDC) in late 1990 and early 2000, we saw a need for a hosted VoIP service for small businesses. Due to my IETF background, a natural protocol choice for me was SIP instead of the then dominant H.323. At first, we trialled a Swedish commercial SIP proxy called Hotsip, but didn't find it flexible enough for our purposes. I then heard about an Open Source SIP proxy project called SER, saw its great potential, and soon became a SER developer although I had not written a single line of code during the past 10 years.