The Potential of Consolidating SIP and XMPP Based Communication for Telecommunication Carriers Sebastian Schumann, Michael Maruschke, and Eugen Mikoczy Slovak University of Technology (STU), Ilkovicova 3, 81219 Bratislava, Slovak Republic {schumann,mikoczy}@ktl.elf.stuba.sk Deutsche Telekom AG, Hochschule f¨ ur Telekommunikation Leipzig (HfTL), Gustav-Freytag-Str. 43-45, 04277 Leipzig, Germany maruschke@hft-leipzig.de Abstract. This paper describes an approach for combining Session Ini- tiation Protocol (SIP) based voice communication with Extensible Mes- saging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) based presence enhancements. The actual role of SIP and XMPP in the Internet Protocol (IP) based communication was analyzed, especially from the telecommunication car- rier (Telco) point of view. The proposed infrastructure extends a typical SIP infrastructure with XMPP for presence status integration. XMPP will be used as instant messaging and presence (IM/P) service infrastructure, the presence in- formation will be extended with SIP phone status information of telecom- munication endpoints. A first prototype has been developed and tested successfully. Key words: SIP, XMPP, Presence, Federation, Collaboration, Telco, Web 2.0, NGN 1 Introduction This paper discusses various approaches to overcome the current lack of sophisti- cated and field-tested presence-enabled communication infrastructures in Telco environments. The target is to provide a service environment for both multime- dia sessions and IM/P. The use of instant messaging has recently become popular not only in pri- vate, but also in the business segment. When people communicate through in- stant messaging systems, one major service enabler must be included: Presence. Without knowing the current state of the other endpoint (i.e., its presence infor- mation), the instant message would be nothing more than an ordinary E-mail. Knowing that the other party is actually online enables small ad-hoc text-based dialogs and other instant services. So far, instant messaging and presence infrastructures are usually provided by Internet Service Providers (ISP). Presence states are exchanged between clients