This paper describes the JAINTM JavaTM Call Control (JCC) Application Programming Interface (API), and its relationship to network protocols, in particular the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). JCC is a high-level object-oriented open, standard API for Next Generation Network (NGN) softswitches that enables rapid creation, by third parties, of services that can run independently of the underlying network technology (e.g. wireless, wired, packet, IP, PSTN) and protocols. SIP is a protocol that has been proposed for a wide variety of uses in IP networks, including call control. We argue that instead of being competitors, JCC and SIP are complementary, with JCC offering higher-layer programming abstractions and protocol-independence, and demonstrate by examples how to map JCC version 1.0 to a SIP environment. We thus show that for common call control applications using JCC is simpler, faster and less maintenance intensive than using SIP directly.