Telcordia Impact Players:
Gary Richenaker
Fifteen years ago, the United States telephone system began running out of area codes. This occurred because nearly 50 years earlier, someone had decided that all three-digit area codes should have either a 0 or a 1 in the middle — and every phone network since then had been built to recognize that requirement. In 1991, the country needed more area codes. More codes meant new numbers in the middle, and a lot of networks and software would have to be modified to accommodate the change. Telcordia called on Gary Richenaker to assess the network and system impacts, and then figure out what to do about them.
They've been calling on Gary ever since. And it's not just Telcordia, either. When it comes to domestic and global numbering and addressing issues, the telecom industry and the U.S. State Department also have Gary Richenaker's number.
If it has to do with numbering, Gary seems to be in the middle of it. Today he is the Rapporteur of the Numbering Question at the ITU-T, he is Chairman of the U.S. ENUM Forum, Chairman of the U.S. Study Group A Ad-Hoc on Numbering, Routing and Services, and Chairman of the U.S. IMSI Oversight Council. If that isn't enough, he has also served as Chairman of the U.S. Study Group A Ad-Hoc on ENUM, as well.
As Chief Architect-Industry Information Systems at Telcordia, Gary has found his way into what some may think is an odd niche. But with the recent explosion of personal communication devices and the convergence of traditional voice networks with Internet Protocol (IP), the complexities of numbering and addressing have grown exponentially. And it's all further compounded by the addition to the global economy of billions of potential new users.
Governments and businesses worldwide have awakened to an important realization: Numbers and IP addresses are commodities that need to be managed and made to interact seamlessly with one another.
And that's where Gary and his team are making some important contributions to the industry. Gary heads an organization within Telcordia that is tasked with collecting and integrating a database for Voice over IP (VoIP) addressing with the existing Telcordia® LERG(TM) Routing Guide, which is the standard for Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTNs).
His team includes individuals who helped develop and maintain the LERG Routing Guide, as well as IP experts and veterans of Telcordia® Applied Research, who help design, test and ensure compliance with industry standards like IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).
Richenaker feels he leads one of the finest teams with which he's ever associated. Consequently, he doesn't see himself as a manager. Instead he likes to gather his people together and just steer them in the right direction. "If you surround yourself with good people, good things will happen," he says.
One of those good things is the Telcordia® VoIP Routing Registry, recent winner of the 2006 Frost & Sullivan Innovation Award. Coupled with the information in the LERG Routing Guide, the VoIP Routing Registry provides a comprehensive integration of PSTN and IP routing data. It provides a mechanism to centrally administer IP routing data so VoIP calls can be efficiently routed over IP facilities and provides carriers with an opportunity to dramatically reduce operational costs and significantly improve call quality. The registry also helps service providers evolve their VoIP traffic off PSTN facilities.
It's important for everyone that Gary and his team succeeds, which is why they don't just bury themselves within Telcordia, but share their developments with other visionary companies to ensure that the solution will be extensible across the telecom industry.
"Seamless interconnection of converging networks is essential for carriers' survival in the future," explains Gary. "The VoIP Routing Registry provides a painless way for carriers to integrate inter-carrier IP routing within a service-oriented architecture and thus enable their networks to efficiently offer new IMS services."
As the world gets smaller, new customers, services and devices are constantly added to the global culture of communication. This means the possibilities – and challenges – simply become bigger. And that's what keeps Gary excited about what he does.
"I love the fact that there's always something new, something fresh to tackle," says Gary.
He sounds confident that whatever's on the horizon, he and his team can handle it. Given Gary Richenaker's track record thus far, we have no reason to doubt him.