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."

Comments

Re:Huh?

[nounderscores]

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.

VoIP rocks!

[afidel]

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.

Re:VoIP rocks!

[Cyberdyne]

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.

According to AT&T, that happened more than 20 years ago: even before the 1984 breakup into Baby Bells, they were saying the most expensive element of a long distance call was timing and billing it. They may have been exaggerating, but once you factor in the need to audit and log everything, keeping clocks synchronized, all the extra CPU load on the exchanges, and most significantly the extra software requirements (instead of "patch line X to line Y", it becomes "log start time, patch line X to line Y, keep track of time until the line is dropped again") and customer support (people querying charges - "I didn't call Wisconsin that day, I was in hospital!", "But 281-555-1234 should be a local call from here"...) - just charge $x per month and make sure the calls get through. Much simpler, hence cheaper. (Just compare a telco's billing department to an ISP's...)

A few years ago, a FAQ for ISPs was "why don't you offer a pay-per-minute option, as an alternative to flat-rate subscriptions?" - the answer was that all the extra overhead would make the per-minute billing more expensive than flat-rate.

For that matter, MCI now offer flat-rate calls through the US (and Canada, for an extra $4/month) on landlines.

Yes, and about time too

[Vendekkai]

Yes, I agree with your thesis - circuit switching is on it's way out. But it's still going to last a good long time.

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.

FCC Licenses

[Detritus]

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.

Re:Wireless = Bad

[afidel]

The fact that you don't know the difference between a WAN and a wLAN makes me wonder why your having trouble getting a reliable wireless network working =) If your having 25% data link layer packet loss then you have serious problems, Cisco gear in a properly configured network (read work with the sales guys to design it, not just slap some AP's up) will not drop any significant number of packets. I used VoIP over .11b for over a year and it was just as satisfactory as the VoIP hardwire phones. Weather conditions shouldn't effect a wLAN indoors, in fact I can't think of how static would interfere at all. Mobile phones will have no impact on a WiFi network because they are on completely different chunks of spectrum 900Mhz or 1.8Ghz, not 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz like WiFi. Basically I think you need to go talk to Cisco or another serious enterprise wireless provider and have a proper system designed, not just throw up a bunch of AP's and expect to get good coverage and reliability.

Circuit Switching

[gatorBYTE]

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...