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The company where I used to work full-time (and now telecommute part-time) has gradually evolved in this direction. Today the "office" is one sublet room downtown with some servers in it. Someone goes in a couple times a week to collect the mail. She's the only one person who's even still in the same town; the rest of us have spread all over the place (for instance, I'm living 9500 miles away).

It was VoIP that really facilitated the diaspora. We thought about using Asterisk but decided that the cost-benefit ratio of running our own phone system was not favourable - nobody wanted the responsibility of keeping the CEO's phone working. So now we're using Nuvio, which has been quite good but not perfect. The pluses:

• Seamless from the perspective of an outside caller. As far as they can tell, we're all sitting in adjacent cubicles.
• There's some psychological advantage about having 3-digit extension dialing between colleagues. People are much more likely to pick up the phone and ask each other questions than before we got the system, even though their calls were getting paid for.
• The Polycom IP phones are great, particularly the speakerphone. I regularly find myself collaborating with co-workers on speakerphone for extended periods of time, sometimes both of us writing or typing and not talking for long stretches, just keeping the line open until a question or comment comes up. I find it quite nice and it really isn't much less effective than working together in person, especially when combined with IM so you can copy and paste stuff back and forth. Also, the Polycom echo cancellation works even when I'm 300ms ping from the SIP server.
• There's just something special about attending all my meetings while sitting on the balcony in boxers.

A few minuses:

• When we first started using the system, there were a few quirks. One-way audio, dropped calls. That all seems to have stopped now.
• It's not cheap. $25-$55 per seat per month, depending on features and calling plan.
• The only way to activate/cancel call forwarding is via Nuvio's slow and cumbersome web interface.

Overall I think the virtual office is working. There are some slackers, of course, but that's always going to be the case. Mostly people find themselves being more productive than they were before. I know I do.

Also, it's allowed the company to retain people who otherwise would have quit because their spouse got a great job somewhere else, or they wanted to spend more time at home with their children. One of the most solid employees is a stay-at-home dad.

The amount saved on office expenses makes it easy to fly people in on those occasions when face-to-face really is necessary - big client meetings and so forth.

Apple is just bitter that someone already took the name iPhone.

Seriously though, why doesn't Apple just make a serious enty into the cell/mp3 market and head off the competition?

-matthew

Sure, you may be able to download Asterisk and set up a good system in your home or office--but there are millions of people who can't (or don't have a staff to maintain it). The market is in providing an affordable service with great features and making it simple and reliable for those millions of potential customers. Sure, there will always be free options, but running a nation-wide service costs a ton of money. If they are going to survive though, they will always have "premium" services that they charge for.

But what do I know? I only helped design the back-end system for a successful nation-wide VoIP provider. (ok, there was a little shameless plug there towards the end. i was weak.)

:-)

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
--Robert Heinlein

Actually becoming a well rounded individual will help you in any field that you decide to make your career. Is merely learning the information necessary for a particular trade all that a child should learn? Should we decide a child is going to be a network admin if the seem to be interested in computers and teach them simple binary math (2^n-2 and 2^(n-2) for subnetting) or hell, since no one really figures that stuff out on their own anymore, just teach them how to use a subnet calculator? Why waste all that time teaching them things that they don't need to know?

I've been a computer nerd my entire life. During school I found out that I have a knack for writing poetry. Who knew? My life was enriched by this experience, and I never would have known had I not been exposed to it. I also sing, play the piano, play golf, write code, cook, study math and physics in my free time, and game. I've also spent the last year building a rather extensive VoIP Network.

Actually learning new things helps us grow as individuals and helps us to find meaningful things to do while we're still around. What happens if you get bored with being a Network Admin after 5,10,15 years? If that is all you ever studied, it might be a little difficult to start completely from scratch with only your networking knowledge to build on. Being grounded in a wide array of subjects, even if only superficially, gives you a foundation to build upon. The brain tends to store information by connecting it with other information. The more connections, the easier it is to retain and process information quickly. Don't knock a good general education.

All of this said, I am not arguing that public schools do a good job of teaching this (I didn't find that my university did a particularly good job of teaching it either). Most K-12 programs teach to the lowest common denominator, so it is dreadfully dull to those who augment their schooling with self-education. But still it is good for exposing the young to things they wouldn't normally think of exploring on their own and giving them a base that they can continue to build on later in life.

The only time I've noticed my service being out is when my cable modem went out for a couple of hours, but I had entered my "Network Unavailabilty Number" so my calls automatically went to my cell phone when there servers couldn't reach my telephone adapter.

You can check out their site at www.nuvio.com. Hope this helps.

As with anything running over the public Internet, there will, at times, be issues which cause disruptions in service; ie. a M$ worm sucking bandwidth, neighbor downloading lots of pr0n and slowing down your cable modem connection, etc.

The key to voice quality with VoIP is latency. Most VoIP endpoints have a built in jitter buffer which is able to recover from some latency, usually around 3ms, but after that is begins to be difficult to carry on a conversation. The latency here is the latency between you and the provider's media gateway, such as an Asterisk box. Normally if you have less than 50ms of latency, then you'll notice no degradation in call quality. If you begin to have more latency, the quality of the call will begin to drop off.

I've been using Nuvio for almost 6 months and it rocks! Latency on my cable modem is around 30ms back to their servers so I rarely, if ever, have a quality issue. Their web interface is pretty cool and they do some cool stuff you can do with regard to voicemail and e-mail. Plus it's not PC based, just plug your regular phone into the adaptor they send you and you can take your adaptor with you when you travel, plug it into any broadband connection and still make and receive calls just like you never left home. This is pretty cool because I travel a lot and if the hotel has broadband in the room, it works great. I even have a few virtual phone numbers across the country so people I know in those cities can call me for free.

As someone mentioned before, it's a lot like cell phones. You just have to look at what you're getting and decide if it's right for you. If you'd rather pay less than with a regular phone provider and be able to make TONS of long distance calls where an occasional dropped call is ok, then go sign up with Nuvio. It's really as good as the reception is with a cell phone, and most of the time lots better. It all depends on the latency.

As with anything running over the public Internet, there will, at times, be issues which cause disruptions in service; ie. a M$ worm sucking bandwidth, neighbor downloading lots of pr0n and slowing down your cable modem connection, etc.

The key to voice quality with VoIP is latency. Most VoIP endpoints have a built in jitter buffer which is able to recover from some latency, usually around 3ms, but after that is begins to be difficult to carry on a conversation. The latency here is the latency between you and the provider's media gateway, such as an Asterisk box. Normally if you have less than 50ms of latency, then you'll notice no degradation in call quality. If you begin to have more latency, the quality of the call will begin to drop off.

I've been using Nuvio for almost 6 months and it rocks! Latency on my cable modem is around 30ms back to their servers so I rarely, if ever, have a quality issue. Their web interface is pretty cool and they do some cool stuff you can do with regard to voicemail and e-mail. Plus it's not PC based, just plug your regular phone into the adaptor they send you and you can take your adaptor with you when you travel, plug it into any broadband connection and still make and receive calls just like you never left home. This is pretty cool because I travel a lot and if the hotel has broadband in the room, it works great. I even have a few virtual phone numbers across the country so people I know in those cities can call me for free.

As someone mentioned before, it's a lot like cell phones. You just have to look at what you're getting and decide if it's right for you. If you'd rather pay less than with a regular phone provider and be able to make TONS of long distance calls where an occasional dropped call is ok, then go sign up with Nuvio. It's really as good as the reception is with a cell phone, and most of the time lots better. It all depends on the latency.