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VoIP, WiFi and the Future of Traditional Telecom
PetiePooo writes "Those of us in the telecom industry have been watching it wither and die in the past few years. Here's why. The Register has an article about the future of mobile communications using VoIP on WiFi. From the article: "... voice over IP would gradually come to be a prime driver of mobile Internet." VoIP has been considered by many for a while now to be the future of traditional telephony. Combining VoIP and WiFi makes a compelling argument for the convergence of voice and data services over a single platform. Here's a previous slashdot discussion on industry's efforts to make this happen."
Previously telecom systems were prohibitively expensive to set up unless you were government or had big backers. Today the playing field is leveled, because both the big corps and the private individual to both establish communications over the last mile.
It will be interesting to see what tiny telcos which are miraculously on the same standard and able to communicate seamlessly will be able to do.
Having the same number follow you from your desk, to anywhere in the campus, to anywhere you can get a VPN connection (WiFi or otherwise), to home (over VPN) is just too cool and too usefull if you want to telecomute part time. Some of the marketing folks were simply blown away when I showed em that they could get calls at the airport, at the coffee shop, at home, and anywhere on the corporate campus all from the same number that they used at the desk. They had call forwarding to anyone in the VoIP system whether they were in their home office or halfway around the world, could do multiline confrencing using the power of the PBX and only need the single connection in their home office. Basically VoIP, especially with ubiquitous wireless access would change communications as much as the cellphone did. And to make corporations happy it greatly reduces the costs. If all of you branch offices already have decent internet connections then adding them into the corporate VoIP cloud just makes sense, all of those calls are already paid for in the line charges. With the cost of bandwidth on an unending downward spiral the cost of calls will basically drop to zero, it really won't make sense to meter them because the metering will cost more than the connection.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Here's what I'd like to see replace it. Forget VoIP over WiFi, you still need a carrier. Wouldn't it be great if we could have a mesh radio network, with a suitable self-discovering routing protocol, that would allow calls to be made from any handset to any other handset? Combined with decent encryption, this would put the privacy back in communications.
As someone who has, on regular occasion, the responsibility of supporting Wireless access technologies for Companies, I can state categorically that the current standards are NOT up to scratch as yet.
What do I mean? Well, for a start I have lost track of the number of times individual machines on Wireless simply 'drop out' of communication, leading to perception on the part of our customers that this isn't a reliable , responsible technology.
We have seen, in implementing Wireless, a whole host of different issues - in ideal circumstances Wireless access works well, is fast enough to be used for most internal office purposes and so on.
The problem with Wireless in any form is that it is not as tollerant of non-ideal conditions. Adverse weather conditions (especially during the summer, when static build up knocks out entire Wireless networks on a regular basis), passing vehicles, other communication devices (especially mobile phones, which regardless of advancements in tech will continue to operate alongside any upgraded solution for some considerable time) and simple things like the type of clothing work by the person using the computer, have been known to knock a machine out of a WAN.
Solutions of phone technology over existing Cat5e UTP cable networking, such as that provided by Nortel Networks work well, with integration into existing office apps, but Wireless for Data is still, in the field, an unreliable technology. Wireless for VoIP still runs the issue of packet lossage (which on any Wireless solution i have ever seen runs at upwards of 25%), which is far more serious than equivalent signal loss for conventional mobile telecom solutions.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
This is the wrong band for this type of service. The 2.4 GHz ISM band is an RF garbage dump. Unlicensed users, such as WiFi, are at the bottom of the heap. Unlicensed users may not cause interference to licensed users and must accept any interference they get. In other words, if another spectrum user is wiping out WiFi coverage in a specific area, tough shit, you have to live with it. The fact that the vast majority of WiFi equipment is designed to be cheap instead of being designed to have good RF performance, just makes things worse. WiFi is not the magic cure for all ills that some would hype it as.
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Unfortunately the handset manufacturers do not sell to consumers, they sell to cellular telephony network operators which then pass the phones on to consumers cheaply. The network operators desperately need bandwidth hungry applications such as video telephony or "multimedia" messages. That is what the phone manufacturers care about providing right now. None of them would dare put anything on the market that takes bandwidth use away from the network operators.
It will happen in at most a few years though; unnatural market conditions tend to fix themselves unless conditions are truly exceptional or the government intervenes.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Ok, I've been hearing that Circuit Switching is dead for a few years now, but I don't see any technology mature enough to take it's place. Mind you, packet switching is great technology, it's just not mature enough to replace what we have in place. That time has not yet come.
When it comes to dial tone, whenever you pick up that phone, you expect to get it - period. We get very annoyed if connection drops or we can't hear anyone on the other end, no matter where we call. The exception to this of course is our wireless calls. It is still a relatively new technology and so we put up with it. We are willing to hang up and retry the call if we get a bad connection. Sometimes we even wait until we get in a new cell on the network, or wait until we get back to a wired phone. The technology is not that dependable yet.
Neither is packet switching. You have already begin to hear of the technology replacing circuit switching on occasion, but we are a ways off from massive replacement of traditional circuit switching. Just as it took a while for electronic switches to mature enough to replace the mechanical ones, so to will this technology have to mature. We are not talking about replacing a few PCs on a network. The Telecom industry moves quite a bit slower. Public expectation is just too great. No, you are going to except that dial tone to be there every time you pick up that phone; even while they are replacing the switch...
I work in the telecoms industry as a vendor supplying equipment to fixed line and mobile operators. As there are increasingly more and more players in this once-monopolized industry, there comes a great need for reduced costs, especially in the core and switching networks.
The number of subscribers increases everyday, and how would the telecom operators cope with the increasing need for additional bandwidth without laying more cables (which of course, increases cost)? By using existing IP network, of course!
The dot-com internet slump has left most of the urbanised areas on the planet over-wired, and underutilized. By deploying VOIP in their switching and access networks, fixed-network operators can now cater for more subscribers, and at the same time, stay competitive with lower prices.
Also, operators can then focus on their business (customer service, billing, operations) without worrying about network expansion, deployment and maintenance of the physical medium, since it's already taken care of by the IP network provider.
One further advantage that VOIP has over conventional switched networks is that IP networks can include a Quality of Service (QOS) package for each subscriber. This means that by subscribing to different QOS packages, subscribers can now have a choice between a low-cost, low (but bearable) voice quality; and high cost and quality alternatives.
VOIP could be the telecom's way into the future. I personally do not see the end of this industry so soon, as there are still lots of terrain to cover. The world is wider than we think!
The existing celluar phone system has very low power requirements. I don't think we can expect any of the existing wireless lan technologies to deliver the stable connections and long battery lives of cell phones.
The real holy grail of wireless tech is not needing wifi repeaters at all. I know a guy at CMU who is working on wireless devices that communicate with base stations and each other. That way, bandwith and power are conserved by each device broadcasting over the smallest area possible. Within densely populated areas like colleges and cities this could focus as a serious competeditor to celluar service, while in more rural areas phones and computers could switch back to the more traditional celluar and wired services.
Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. --Phillip K. Dick (remove SPAM to email)
Having spent the last several years watching 'telecom implode', I would observe that that has largley been the result of tulip-mania style business decisions.
Those VERY few telcos that stuck to sound business decisions avoided chapter 11, and are laughing all the way to the bank!
That being said, VoIP, properly implemented, is a very strong contender going into the next 5 years, because more and more businesses are looking for a 'silver bullet' for ALL their comm needs. The carrier that hands them a magic box that serves their internet, voice, VPN and PBX needs will retain the business of the Enterprise customer, and be successful.
This hasn't really been possible until about next year, when we reach a critical mass of clue in the Enterprise world. IP PBX vendors are already starting to clean up, because, contrary to what voice only guys tell you, or data only guys tell you, IT IS AMAZINGLY EASY to get a VoIP PBX going, if you have enough bandwidth (and most anyone can afford enough bandwidth in their office), and it is SLIGHTLY LESS EASY to get it delivered through a smart carrier, who will bring you a multi-megabit facility to handle your voice and data needs...
Bottleneck removed, Class of Service (via MPLS) built in, works seemlessly...
The key, as always, is access and bandwidth.
Telephony might just be where you see IPv6 being deployed first.
Telephony is by definition peer-to-peer so you are stuck if you are hidden behind a NAT. Even if you confined VoIP to a class A network like 10.255.255.255 you would only have a little more than 16 million available numbers.
IPv6 is also prepared for QOS which will be a good thing for telephony.
As a consultant to the telecom industry, I have to pay attention to what works, not what sells papers. This year's big hype is WiFi, which was designed for room-sized LANs but somehow seems to have captured the imagination of the public as if it could actually hurt the telcos (ILECs). VoIP has been hyped since '96 or so, and has eaten tons of vulture capital, and while it has nice niche applications, it is still no substitute for the Real Thing.
Yes, you can run voice over IP. Yes, you can run IP over wireless. Heck, 16 years ago I was running IP over 1200 bps Aloha AX.25 packet radio links. Very instructional, because Phil Karn's NOS let me watch a decoded protocol trace of passing packets, and they came so slowly that I could study all of them in real time. Think about it. The point is that you can't run voice over *any* IP, just some paths.
Circuit-switched telephony is cheap to build. Sure the existing telco networks are made of gear that they paid a lot for, but ILECs depreciate gear over 20+ years. So the Lucent 5ESS and Nortel DMS-100 are VAX-era hardware. What did a MIPS cost when the 5E was designed? Modern circuit switching (which CLECs and some small ILECs buy, not to mention the PBX market) uses modern parts. The switching hardware is only a little costlier than IP stuff, and it sounds better. All the sexy call control features are in the control software, which in a modern system is agnostic about physical-layer protocol. So you can do nice things on circuit, ATM, or IP. Just a different card in the switch.
WiFi's limits are obvious -- there's finite spectrum, and it's shared with domestic cookers (microwave ovens are right in the middle of its band!), cordless phones, VCR "multipliers", baby monitors, and all sorts of other crap. WiFi5 is cleaner spectrum, though the lower-volume gear is costlier. The 5 GHz band will benefit from a recent FCC rule change that adds 275 MHz more bandwidth. But unlicensed still means low power, and either very short range *or* directional antennas (which take more work). And you have to worry about things like hills and trees.
I'm always looking for alternatives to Bell wire -- that's really a big part of my job! But WiFi ain't it. There are non-WiFi radios that are better for "last mile" purposes (and slower, because they have to trade speed for range -- see Shannon). The FCC is contemplating making some additional frequencies available, and in rural/exurban areas, especially flatland, wireless can do wonders. In hilly or woody areas, it's tougher. In urban areas, spectrum is too limited. Fiber optic bandwidth is infinite -- there's lots of sand out there, and only one radio spectrum.