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Japan: VoIP for the Masses With 050
securitas writes "Red Herring has a brief article about wide-scale VoIP deployment in Japan with the introduction of the new 050 area code. The new area code 'allows plain old telephone service (POTS) to seamlessly transition to voice-over-IP (VoIP).' Japan is now the largest country to deploy VoIP. Six companies have bought 8.5 million VoIP phone numbers, with 68% (5.78 million) of the new numbers owned by Softbank BB Phone. At $.010 for a three-minute call, the cost is three to eight times less expensive than regular wireline service."
Nobody paid for the call directly. But someone had to be paid to mine the dilithium that powered the warp core that drove the the communications array. And someone else had to be paid to build the communications array. Its called trickle down economics. Do you think that all the LD companies are suddenly finding it in the goodness of their heart to offer flat rate LD? Not bloody likely. One company did it to get a competitive edge, the rest had to do it or risk losing business. Even at flat rate, they're still making a killing at $24.95 a month...it costs them a fraction of a fraction of a cent to terminate an LD minute.
It's very good to see some forward movement in the development of 'real world' VoIP solutions. Let's hope 2004 will be the year when the rest of the world can agree on a set of standards that will allow this technology to bring the global benefits it has always had the promise to fulfill. One of the big downsides to the dotcom bust, was that VoIP was to be the next big area of convergence, and suddenly everyone pulled there investment from it, into bolstering their weakening core markets. With financial statistics for next year looking more promising, let's hope the tide may once again turn toward R&D, and an exciting and innovative future.
I was in an IT position in a national wireless call center environment back in the mid-90's when VoIP was just starting to ramp up. Things have improved since then I will grant you but compared to traditional telco voice service it still is way behind.
Look at all of the things that can (and do) affect Internet data. DDOS attacks, primary global DNS server exploits, BGP/RIP route poisoning, etc. Awhile back Cisco had to distribute a patch affecting practically every IOS version due to some exploit. Plenty of network engineers were patching away at the very infrastructure of the Internet.
The POTS concept might seem old and passe but it's reliability can't be argued.
Regarding the cost, instead of $0.01, the article states :
a three-minute call on VoIP costs between 10.5 and 10.9 yen (about $0.10)
Of course they could have come right out and said 10 Cents.
Hopefully this means that Japan will put more force onto the US government to switch
Yeah, like when one or two countries changed to the metric system. The US shows no fear of being left in the dark ages.
Letting the operator own the address is repeating the existing mistake with numbering plans.