SIP Forum Names Vijey Jenkal of Comcast to Board of Directors, Re-Elects Chairman Richard Shockey and Director Alan Johnston to New Terms
Industry luminaries to continue the SIP Forum’s history of thought leadership and technical expertise surrounding IP communications and the proliferation of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
NORTH ANDOVER, MA (March 7, 2012) – The SIP Forum (www.sipforum.org) announced the recent election of Vijey Jenkal, Director of Product Development Engineering at Comcast Cable, to the SIP Forum Board of Directors. Additionally, the Forum membership re-elected Chairman Richard Shockey and Dr. Alan Johnston, Distinguished Engineer in Avaya’s Applications and Emerging Technology division, to new terms on the SIP Forum Board of Directors.
The elections were held during the SIP Forum’s Annual General Meeting in Boston, MA on December 12, 2011. Each member of the Board of Directors serves a two-year term.
The election of Jenkal and re-election of Shockey and Johnston, all industry thought leaders, complement the SIP Forum’s already prestigious Board of Directors, which also includes Chris Gatch, CTO of Cbeyond; Steven Johnson, CEO of Ingate Systems; Glenn Russell, Director of Business Services at Cable Television Laboratories Inc. (CableLabs); Mary Barnes, Principal Engineer of the CTO organization at Polycom; Hadriel Kaplan, Vice President of Technology at Acme Packet; and Marc Robins, SIP Forum President and Managing Director.
“I am excited to join the SIP Forum Board as its newest member, and I look forward to continuing to build on the positive momentum of the SIP Forum developed over the past year through various initiatives, including SIPconnect and the upcoming SIPNOC US 2012,” said Jenkal. “This is a very important organization within the international communications technology industry and I am excited by the opportunity to work with my fellow board members to drive SIP adoption both broader and deeper into new communications technologies and applications.”
Jenkal is the Director of Product Development Engineering at Comcast Cable and is responsible for the architecture and design of business voice and messaging services for the company. Prior to leading the business services engineering team, Jenkal led the development of a SIP- and ENUM- based interconnection solution for both internal and external usage at Comcast. Before joining Comcast, Jenkal worked for Sprint as a lead engineer in the carrier interconnection space. Jenkal has a MS EE from University of Kansas.
Shockey, who was named Chairman of the SIP Forum in 2010, is a widely respected telecommunications industry veteran with a decades-long and distinguished track record in helping shape numerous technical standards that have become the foundation for today’s SIP-based next generation network infrastructure and application ecosystem. Richard Shockey is the Principal of Shockey Consulting, a private firm advising telecommunications companies and the investment community on any number of issues related to Next Generation Networks, Voice over IP, Communications Provisioning, Peering, Numbering and Signaling.
Most recently, Mr. Shockey was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC), an FCC advisory committee tasked with advising the federal agency regarding best practices and practical actions pertaining to the security, reliability, and interoperability of communications systems.
“This appointment is a great honor and I am excited to take my place on this council to help the FCC guide the future of our nation’s communications infrastructure,” said Shockey. “The CSRIC plays a crucial role in the development and security of America’s communications systems and finds itself at a particularly interesting intersection as the country fully transitions to a pure IP-based infrastructure, opening a slew of opportunities, as well as challenges. It is truly an exciting time to be joining such a critical organization.”
Previously, Mr. Shockey was a founder and co-Chair of the IETF ENUM and DRINKS Working Groups and is author of several IETF RFCs. He has also authored numerous technical articles on SIP-based Next Generation Network technologies for a plethora of publications. Mr. Shockey has spoken countless times at industry events and led the architecture and design of several commercial products. Additionally, Mr. Shockey served as a Director and Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at NeuStar Inc. [NYSE: NSR].
“I am honored to have been re-appointed as Chairman of the Board,” said Shockey. “We have made considerable progress over the last two years to lay the foundation for ubiquitous implementation of SIP communications technologies in global service provider and enterprise network environments, but there is still much work to be done. I am excited to work with our membership and fellow board members to take this next step and make this vision a reality.”
Re-elected to his second term as member of the SIP Forum Board of Directors, Dr. Alan Johnston has been involved with SIP and VoIP since the mid-1990s, helping to spearhead the development and adoption of SIP and VoIP in both the service provider and enterprise markets. He served as an architect on the first enterprise SIP VoIP product in the U.S. as a Distinguished Technical Member at MCI. Dr. Johnston is currently a Distinguished Engineer in Avaya’s Applications and Emerging Technology division. He co-authored the SIP protocol specification RFC 3261 and edited the Basic and PSTN call flows Best Current Practices documents, RFC 3665 and RFC 3666, along with additional RFCs. He has also worked on SIP Service Examples, Peer-to-Peer SIP and security, and co-authored the ZRTP protocol.
Along with his protocol and technical work, Dr. Johnston is the author of four books discussing SIP, including the best-selling SIP: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol, Understanding Voice over IP Security, SIP Beyond VoIP, and Internet Communications Using SIP. Dr. Johnston has also served as co-chair of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Centralized Conferencing Work Group.
“I look forward to my continued participation in the SIP Forum Board of Directors, and in supporting the vital mission of the organization,” said Dr. Johnston. “The SIP Forum’s role as a champion of technical interoperability for the IP communication industry is more important today than ever before, and I am very excited to stand on the front lines bringing the charge forward!”
Together, Jenkal, Shockey, and Johnston, along with other members of the SIP Forum and its Board of Directors, will leverage their years of experience and expertise to advocate and champion new IP communications applications and technologies and evangelize the use of the SIP standard to advance IP communications capabilities.
About the SIP Forum
The SIP Forum is an IP communications industry association that engages in numerous activities that promote and advance SIP-based technology, such as the development of industry recommendations, the SIPit interoperability and testing events, special interoperability workshops, educational seminars, and general promotion of SIP in the industry. One of the Forum’s notable technical activities is the development of the SIPconnect Technical Recommendation – a standards-based recommendation that provides detailed guidelines for direct IP peering and interoperability between IP PBXs and VoIP service provider networks. The SIPconnect Compliant Certification Program is an associated program through which eligible companies can gain SIPconnect validation and the right to license the use of the SIP Forum’s ‘SIPconnect Compliant’ certification mark – the official brand of the leading standard for SIP Trunking products and services. Other important Forum initiatives include work in Fax-over-IP interoperability, User Agent Configuration, video interoperability, and SIP and IPv6. For more information, please visit: https://www.sipforum.org.
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