Slashdot Mirror
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.
How soon till be start hearing about people using dial modems over VoIP phone lines for Internet access?
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
I don't think so.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
I need a phone line from the telephone company so I can get DSL so I can use VOIP to talk to people over the phone?
'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.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I bet the Internet Phone will cause an immense improvement in latancy. (Unless people enjoy speaking with several milliseconds latancy).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
only in very limited housing developments. And here in the twin cities, those developments often get sued, because the fiber to every home in the area runs voice, data, and cable programming; the telco's & cable operators don't like their turf being stepped on.
I had a friend that had to go and testify in defense of the development she was moving into because of this very reason.
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
would be transmitting over the internet could they be sued using anti "spam" laws? i mean spam is afterall spam.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
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 been over a year since I've had to pay for a long distance phone call by the minute. Almost every cellular plan has free long distance included with it. Between that, e-mail and AIM/ICQ et al. for communication, the consumer is becoming less and less likley to actually pick up the phone and make an hour long phone call across the nation. It's too expensive...
Instead of dialing 10-10-982-21-121321-1231242342 before every call, just pick up your PC handset. Besides that, you'll have the advantange of being able to have your computer monitor incoming calls, allowing you for customization of when your phone rings, who goes straight to voice-mail, and hundreds of other plusses.
I want my phone service to cut out everytime a Microsoft worm hits the wild..... I'll stick to current "old phone" technology for the time being, thank you.
when you seen the headline Quest Launches VoIP Trial and the first thing you think is that someone is suing someone.
"its all data."
"Hello, emergency? There's a man trying to break down my front door with a chain saw!"
"We apologize for the inconvenience, but this program is not responding. Please reboot your telephone and try again."
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
I think the age of converged communications is here, and am happy that large telcos are going to start moving that direction, but maybe we ought to think about another model, other than the large telco ("Hey we own the wires!") pardigm.
If at first you don't succeed, redefine 'success'
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.
In possibly related news, the Internet domain name "stopvoicespam.com" was registered today.
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
I've had full access to all of Qwest's services. That's probably because I live 2 miles west of Minneapolis, but I don't want their service.
They have horrible customer service, lousy phone service, and they use creative billing practices. I had to double check every bill and call to complain at least every other month.
For a while, we ditched the land line completely for cell phones. Then, McLeod USA started offering residential lines in our area. We signed up, and now we have a landline cheaper and more reliable than Qwest could ever hope for.
-
"Vengeance is fine," sayeth the Lord.
However, I wouldn't switch to Qwest DSL just to get VOIP.
Don't switch to Qwest for anything, ever.
The thing is, the best way for the telco's to do this is not to use the public internet backbone, but their existing infrastructure. Consider, they allready have the copper and fiber in place, The could then use VoIP to vastly increase the amount of traffic which they could support.
This also obviates most of the quality issues inherent in the internet. It would allow the telco to continue to provide a high quality service without relying on temperamental internet links. Gateways to the public internet could be used when needed, but their use would probably be best avoided except where no other route existed.
This would allow the phone companies to provide VoIP service without all the potential issues of dropping such traffic into the uncontrolled internet. Consider they will be charging you for this service, they need to provide the best and most reliable service, what better way than to keep it to infrastructure they control or have binding agreements with the controllers of, rather than an uncontrolled medium.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
I use Vonage, pay $40.00 a month and have unlimited US-wide service. My phone number is of the Miami area (area code 786, but I could have chosen any area code) and I use a regular telephone.....And I do all this from my home in Central America.
They give you a little cisco thingy that you hook up to your hub and configures itself using DHCP. I have a 192Kbps connection and NO-ONE has been able to figure out I'm using voip. In fact, voice quality is much better than the regular Cable & Wireless telephony service (wich is pretty good I might add).
Try it, it even has voicemail, caller ID, and all the other regular goodies.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Except of course apparently where the RIAA is concerned where its ok to copy analog (fm stereo) but not digital (cd).
Actually it wasn't OK with the RIAA for you to copy FM radio to analog tape. But the courts made them allow it, by identifying a right to make a personal-use copy for listening to the broadcast program at a time other than that of the broadcast ("time-shifting").
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Vonage and Deltathree support fax. Packet 8 doesn't support fax.