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Open Settlement Protocol

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OSP is a client/server protocol that Internet service providers use to exchange authorization, accounting, and usage information to support IP telephony. OSP is defined by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) Project TIPHON (Telecommunications and Internet Protocol Harmonization Over Networks).

OSP provides a way for ISPs to support billing for voice and fax over IP services. The protocol is implemented in voice telephony gateways such as softswitches, H.323 multimedia conferencing gateways, and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) proxies.

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, 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>.

Open Settlement Protocol standard specification may be found in the document ETSI Technical Specification 101 321 Telecommunications and Internet Protocol Harmonization Over Networks (TIPHON) Release 4: Open Settlement Protocol for Inter-domain pricing, authorisation, and usage exchange Version 4.1.1 was ratified in November 2003.

The document's statement of scope reads: "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 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." XML element and attribute declarations in this section define the provisional DTD for the Open Settlement Protocol.

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