Abstract
Satellites are foreseen to be complementary to the future terrestrial networks in deploying multimedia communication systems. The use of Geostationary multi-beams and On-Board Processing (OBP) provides a great opportunity for the speedy deployment of real time services such as IP Voice services over satellites. Voice over IP is a new technology and has the potential to revolutionise telephone communications within the modern enterprise, and promises new integrated services and lower costs. This paper examines the challenges of providing IP telephony, multiparty conference service and using IP multicast to distribute voice conferencing packets over Geostationary satellites. Also this paper analyses the delays in setting/joining audio conferences and proposes to reduce the H.323 signalling messages in order to reduce the audio conference signalling delays.