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Qwest Launches VoIP Trial
prostoalex writes "Qwest Communications International, a local phone operator covering 14 Northern and Western United States, launched its first Voice-over-IP trial in Minneapolis/St.Paul area. 'The future of voice communications will be based on the Internet', Qwest's CEO was quoted as saying." Also in the news: some vague plans by AT&T to use VoIP as well.
Am I the only one that doesn't want VOIP to lower costs so that telemarketing can be outsourced to less expensive countries? At least now there are costs keeping the telemarketing volume below the spam volume. That, and they can usually speak English.
I don't want everyone that can hook a phone into the internet to be able to call me.
t
'The future of voice communications will be based on the Internet',
How long did it take these guys to figure this one out? VOIP has been around for a while now and a number of folks have been using it rather successfully. We have been using iChat to video conference from North America to New Zealand for remote collaboration for a while now leading me to wonder which companies are in control of all that excess fiber bandwidth that is sitting around.
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VOIP will radically cut costs for the Telco - the equipement used to operate the internet is much cheaper per byte than the equipment used to operate a traditional phone service.
I'm just really surprised they haven't caught on before now.
Stop the brainwash
Cable vision has done something similar, which worked out well, but there are some interesting problems. When the power goes out, you're out of luck. Even with a UPS if the power is out for a few hours, not much you can do about it unless everybody buys a home generator. Also, they where denied 911. Meaning that there is no 911 service because it wasn't deemed reliable enough to host one. Small problems, but you still seem to need another phone just in case.
It's not a VoIP service despite what the marketing droids call it. It's a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) gateway service which is a very different animal. VoIP doesn't require a phone company, just an IP network connection.
What Qwest and the other bells (and Vonage) are doing is allowing VoIP call termination to the existing POTS network.
Everyone's seen the writing on the wall and it says "POTS is dead, long live the packet!"
At some point a network effect will kick in when there is a critical mass of VoIP users who discover everyone they call is on VoIP and realize they don't need the bells for anything.
POTS = Plain Old Telephone Serivce, the basci analog serivce you get from the phone company.
Crazy. I think that there should be a differnt word used. Something like Quest Launches VoIP in test markets. Or something, just don't use the word trial to mean anything other than a court case. It messes with my brain.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Everyone's seen the writing on the wall and it says "POTS is dead, long live the packet!"
I'm looking for a huge shakeout a la the dot-com boom/bust -- because everyone's jumping in to the VoIP market. Here's an example:
An outfit with the unwieldy company/website name of media-streams USA, Inc. set up (at no small cost) at a recent Microsoft Office launch seminar, and passed out business-card CDs of their presentation. I asked in passing about states regulating VoIP, and the response was "Good luck regulating a packet!"
But the website is little more than a rather generic-looking site (nice dolphin, though) with a lot of buzzwords and not a lot of "why I need this". The CD's label features another short selection of buzzwords, including "Future-proof". What the heck is that supposed to mean? And to top it all off, they misspelled the name of their company's city ! Spellnig doesn't count on Slashdot, but in the real world, 100% perfect is a requirement, not a goal.
I don't expect these VoIP cowboys to survive past the initial early-adopter phase. They'll either be gobbled up, or go out of business, or rarely, become the next [insert corporate success story here]. Don't buy stock just yet.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
This is yet just another business model that needs drastic changes based on the networked digital economy. Libraries, Travel Agents, Porn, Gambling, Advertising, Music [and eventually] Movie distribution, and now telephone communication. All going to the packets.
There is something scary about so much economy on the wires, but such will be the Information Age. The telephone companies are one of the larger entities who's cheese is getting moved, and I don't expect them to go down without a crying about it. The RIAA is another who now has to accept that their content will be on the lines to stay.
Once everyone starts using end-point phones that accept not only traditional lines, but ethernet, we're going to see a very low barrier-to-entry for providing phone service, IMO. Once this steps up, all the bells and whistles we again be sold to us (photo, video, messaging, etc). There's a slew of new possibilities that a lot of new players could innavte into such a system. I'm looking forward to it.
Imagine if you will:
- Scanning photos, receipts, etc into your [cell] phone for the recipient, live or to an answering machine. Or sending them a video.
- Getting a message on your phone from your mother who thinks "this commercial, watch this" or "this newspaper article" was really interesting or funny. Ok, maybe this isn't all good.
- Calling your home silently and hopping around the house phones to check their cameras (babysitter, teenagers, security).
- Having a web page served from your phone that holds your recorded messages, images, memos, stored documents, etc. And being able to pull them out of another phone.
mug