Qwest & Cablevision Launch VoIP Service

securitas writes "Qwest announced that it will be the first RBOC to offer VoIP service to its customers, starting with Minnesota. Not to be outdone, Cablevision launched VoIP service for its '1 million high-speed Internet customers in the lucrative New York market.' Cablevision's Tom Rutledge said the company plans to take advantage of last Monday's FCC local-number portability ruling that lets customers keep their phone numbers when switching service providers. Qwest plans to challenge the local-number portability ruling. It looks like the disruptive technology hype that surrounded VoIP in the late-1990s is about to see its first real litmus test."

Comments

The apparent trend in the industry

[Anonymous Coward]

The consulting firm that I work in has been observing the ebbs and flows in the VoIP market for the last 12 years, ever since Corel released "RemoteSpeak" has trial version in Newfoundland, Canada. At the time the quality of the data was fairly poor due to latency in the early stages of the Internet (certain conversation were packed in taped and shipped to Oceania for instance) but it showed some great promise in the BBS world of FidoNet.

We are now agressively working towards a partnership with AvenTail to compete with Netscreen and Cisco. Our goal is to make phone access a commodity; we will target the content of the phone conversations as a potential revenue source or provide it as medium for advertisers. Our initial research showed that people were willing to tolerate commercials of certain amount of length in return for crystal-clear free (or very inexpensive) long-distance calls.

We have the product and with some luck we'll be able to get the cooperation of smaller CLECs in the mid-western area for a pilot.

Which is nice.

Telcos Win?

[binaryDigit]

Has VOIP missed it's window of opportunity thanks to the continued proliferation of cell phones and favorable calling plans? Both my wife and I have unlimited long distance built into our cellular plans which eliminates one of the biggest "plus's" for VOIP (international calling not withstanding). So for us, VOIP is an utter non-issue. A few years ago, it would have been since we both have family scattered about the US that we called frequently. And with unlimited night/weekend minutes and scads of "plain ole minutes", it makes it even less compeling.

So have the telcos won due to the long gestation period of wide spread VOIP. Other than international callers, or those who shun cell phones, what reason would one have for going with VOIP. Personally the one thing that keeps me attached to my land line, is more of the "comfort" of having such an old tried and true technology around "just in case" (redundancy good). That and it still serves as the "family" phone number for inbound calls. And with cellular home distribution gadgets coming online, even that use will slowly be eliminated.

Corporate logic

[WegianWarrior]

If you can't beat them, sue them!

Seriously thought, VoIP isn't a new thing. I myself use it frequently to talk to my fiancee in the US - as I've have broadband I don't pay any extra to call her, and as she don't pay for local calls* she don't have to pay anything either. The option - picking up my phone and dial her number - would cost me a staggering 9 cents a minute, as well as gobbling up her 'long distance minutes'** (I would have to use her mobile phone; as much as I like my motehr in law, I don't want her to be able to listen in, and as the phone is in the kitchen...). I'm happy to see that the US is taking up numberportability thought - somethign we've enjoyed for years now. The next step they are introdusing here seems to be the ability to take your number along even if you move from one end of the nation to the other.

_*) This is the one issue which I think the US telecomsystem is better than the norwegian one.
**) What kind of idiot decided that _you_ should pay when someone calls you? As long as y'all accepts that, you'll be getting screwed bigtime by your telcos.

Re:Corporate logic

[twisty7867]

Ah, but you have a contradiction there. The reason we pay to receive calls on mobile phones is that we don't pay for local calls. There really isn't a practical way for an end user to distinguish between the number for a landline phone and the number for a mobile phone here in the US. In fact, starting next Monday, you'll be able to port landline numbers to mobile phones (which I plan to do immediately). If I remember right, in Europe, mobile numbers all have certain prefixes, so that when you call someone, you know you will be charged extra because it's a mobile number. Here in the US, we have never really had that (some cell providers were known to use specific number blocks, like Sprint PCS and 99x numbers), and with the newest rules on porting your number, there will be absolutely no difference - what was a landline number this week could be a cell number next week.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It isn't really "911."

[Justen]

Vonage and most of the other consumer-oriented VoIP providers offer a forwarder which hopefully connects you with emergency services when you dial 911 from your handset.

You almost always have to enable the service, after you've signed up, by providing a real physical address to your house. The service provider then determines your nearest Public Safety Answering Point (called PSAPs), which is what operators used to do when you dialed "0" and said "HELP!"

This is not the typical "911 Center" that most people would think it is, and they don't automatically have your address when you call. You'll likely have to state what type of emergency you have, wait on hold, and then provide them with your address.

Beyond all of this, Vonage, in particular, highly advises you to not depend on their 911 service. An outage on their behalf, upstream from them, of your broadband, or of your electricity would eliminate your ability to dial 911 from your Vonage service. There are many weak links in that chain, and they're smart to tell you so.

I read earlier that someone suggested picking up a wireless phone that has good signal but isn't subscribed to any particular service. Cell phones almost universally will dial 911 if they can, subscribed or not. (Double-check that, though.) There again, though, remember they'll likely not have your physical address.

All that said, if you have some higher-than-average-reason to need 911 services, I'd not depend on anything but an ILEC landline. (Even CLECs tend to save money by ditching the E911 tandem, which, even though unlikely, could cause a problem.)

justen

Actually.....

[just some computer j]

This isn't new. I worked for a company here in Kansas City that was doing basicly VoIP three years ago. The customer didn't need a special phone or anything. The company ran their own fiber and heavy coax in the city, the CPE stuff was pretty basic, and was very reliable. It worked much like this:
From the cable node or repeater on the telephone pole behind someone's house a new cable was ran (This isn't some Time Warner thing). Then the customer gets a new box put on the back of their house, the NID. The NID did all the frequency splitting and stuff, and has an IP address in it. All we had to do was hook up the already exsisting cable lines that were in the house and telco lines to the NID, and you had VoIP. You even got high speed internet access.

Super ..

[jason.mitchell]

Now my cable modem will be even more slower :) Great.