Voice Peering

Definition - What does Voice Peering mean?

Voice peering is the process of forwarding calls from one Internet service telephony provider (ISTP) to another using purely Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. Unlike regular VoIP calls, voice peering is not forwarded over the public switched telephone network (PSTN), so there are no call charges. This means costs savings as well as better call quality because there is no required transcoding between the VoIP cloud, the PSTN and back again.

Voicing peering is also known as Voice over Internet Protocol peering (VoIP peering).

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Techopedia explains Voice Peering

Voice peering is preferred over passing through the PSTN because of quality and cost. It may occur on the second layer of the OSI model. For example, it could occur over a private network, wherein carriers that are connected to it manage peering between each other. Or it could occur on Layer 5, where peering occurs on open networks and signaling and routing is managed by a central provider.

Voice peering may occur on a bilateral or on a multilateral basis. Bilateral is when two entities directly work together and exchange traffic. This relationship is usually associated with a commercial type of transaction. Multilateral peering is when many different parties all agree to a common set of policies so that they can exchange traffic. An example of this is the VPF ENUM Registry, where all involved parties agreed to send and receive calls directly for free.