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VoIP Advances And Trends For 2004
gardel writes "So everyone's top-tech predictions for 2004 says it will be the year of VoIP. What does that really mean? This may narrow it down. Here's Voxilla's list of the top-10 advances and trends in the world of VoIP. On the list: VoIP and cellular converges, IP phones take over, Chinese and Mexican phone numbers come to the U.S., Asterisk hits it big. What would you add?"
With or without VoIP regulation, a global P2P (PSTN-connected) voice network emerge..
How? The article talks about Asterix-to-asterix networks bypassing telcos totally. Also VoIP providers routing IP only to each other to end call termination costs.
I beleve that the Larger Asterix networks and VoIP providers will enter into call peering agreements just like the early internet.
It start out as hobbyists setting up Asterisk Open Source PBX boxes connected to their home POTS line.
Will some form of ENUM allow least cost routing to boxes sitting in basements and garages around the world?
If an ITSP in Europe can setup an Asterisk box with PSTN access and start offering US phone numbers and vice-versa, will global number plans become obsolete? What effect will the ridiculously low barrier to entry for VoIP have on telecommunications?
2004 Will be interesting indeed.
--
gnaa-RKZ - Support your local community
I'm hoping that VoIP remains as unencumbered by foolish laws and regulations as is. With recent, pending and looming court actions this could change soon and be one of the great turning points of 2004. As is, though, I think we're in a very good situation and I hope the lawmakers keep it that way. Fingers crossed for communication technology!
Slashdot: when news breaks, we give you the pieces.
Just because VoIP involves voice, that does NOT mean it's the same as telephone service. The monopolistic nature of telephone service (only one company can realistically have lines in a given area, particularly in the "last mile") makes heavy regulation and regulatory fees necessary. VoIP does not suffer from this physical limitation to competition, and thus any number of VoIP providers can exist in any area. This is yet another blatant attempt of government to cash in on an emerging technology.
Intel is currently working furiously on a cellular chip that will seamlessly roam to WiFi networks. They also want it to carry prodigous amounts of data. Known as the Digital Briefcase specification, any compliant PC will automagically recognize the phone and allow you to log into the PC as if it were your own. Mail, favorites, documents/music and even wallpaper and settings will appear seamlessly. Check out my sig for more...
POTS will die a quick death unless the big TelCos start lobbying for taxes. Slashdotters move these companies up on the list of Evil entities.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
For now, my small consulting company is sticking with good ole land lines and cell service. I am not one to always go out on the cutting edge of technology as I've tended to get cut in the past.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
gardel: at least have the courtesy to admit that Voxilla IS YOUR SITE.
Check gardel's previous posts if you don't believe me.
If you're going to self-promote, be up front about it.
I am currently setting up an asterisk PBX with polycom ip phones and VOIP for outgoing calls. It is incredible software. I have no doubt that in the next year or two, it will become one of the most important open source projects, right up there with Linux and Apache.
The software does have a steep learning curve (not worse that any other telco system though). Be prepared to spend a few weeks just getting a basic system with a couple of phones to go. However, once you get it up and going, it is very easy (and cheap!) to expand.
Asterisk will totally replace the current PBX and key systems, and it will also play a key role in destroying the traditional overpriced channelized telco services.
My prediction is that Siemens VoIP efforts, despite a booming market, will continue their remarkable losses in the nine figure range. This is a good reminder for the need of good management in any high technology endeavor, and the foolishness of the "we are too big to fail" mentality.
I've never personally understood this mania that the POTS folks have for dragging all of the old telephone system baggage into VOIP. Why on earth should we perpetuate the same old nonsense of "area codes" & "country codes"? (They are completely artificial & capricious anyway.) What's wrong with dialing someone by their IP address, that's what I want to know?
"The time is always now" - Victor
Hooray - now phones can have the same coverage and reliability as broadband Internet. What a leap forward.
EPIC's VoIP letter to the FCC
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Skype will be one of the shakers. 5 million downloads, soaring up with exponential curve, still in beta but over constantly over 100K users online at the same time.
Unless they sell it away, there is no reason why Skype would not shake the market similarly as Kazaa did. Expect atleast to see the Telcos to read the law in new and inspiring ways to stop the rush.
I agree there are some issues for the VoIP folks to figure out here but for comparisons sake ....
the first question you get asked when you phone 911 on a traditional land line is "where are you?" This is because the traditional location information is wrong a surprising amount of the time.
I'll make sure that SoIP does NOT work with your products manwhore
MoFscker
ROTFL... but I am honored.
If you are going to steal one of my previous posts, please remove my name from the post before you hit submit.
This guy is using a database of highly ranked posts to boost his karma.
Davak
I was just looking at getting Vonage this very afternoon. They claim to route your 911 calls to the correct place based upon information you give.
The biggest challenge I see these days is VoIP is becoming like online music stores. Everyone is trying to get in the act of offering it because it's free from fees/regulation for the most part... The market will become saturated and the time to make money on the service will be gone fairly quickly.
MoFscker
You can call 911 on a land line even if you don't have service!
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
>Why do some of you hijack mention of SCO in your pathetic attempts to MOD UP on FUNNY POINTS?
Nice you brought this subject. I just hope SCO does not claim property of VoIP.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Instead of "your call is important to us" you get a 404 error.
i join my company 4 years ago. one of our main goals then was (and still is to a certain extend) to sell/deploy VoIP solutions to ILECs/CLECs in the asia region. VoIP was suppose to be the "next" thing in the following year.
3... coming to 4 years now. VoIP is still not that widely taken up. so will 2004 be the VoIP year? i don't think so. with cost cutting and the still slow adoption rate, it will be another VoID year.
Another reason why we should go over to the IPv6 standard as soon as it's mature. If everyone wants VoIP we have to get more IPs.
:)
The hack called NAT can probably be hacked even more to do this, but it would've been a lot easier if we used the almost infinite pool of IPs accessible through IPv6.
A new domain should also arise dedicated to naming of IPs. Easier with name + city, instead of those nice long IPs?
I'm not very familiar with VoIP, so correct me if I'm wrong.
I'll bet if you posted on /. that you're looking for a competent system administrator, you'd find one.
www.clarke.ca
I wonder if at some point phone numbers and gateways to the conventional phone system as we know them today become irrelevant.
there are many ways to do this now, cheaply and easily too.
hook up headphones and a mic to your pc and use any one of the free service websites, I don't want to name them, as I dont wish to seem like promoting them, and I'm sure you can find them on your own.
Also, where I live at least, there is a USB Phone you can buy for about $40, it's basically just a standard phone that plugs into your USB port, and you can call ANYONE in the world who has a USB phone, even another brand name.
And the software is freely bundled with it, requires no special ISP services, your call goes out as data, and the ISP doesn't even know about it.
So there you go, the beginning of the end for telco's is here, their days are numbered, not that anyone is crying...
Heck, I think even radio shack offers a phone like this now, in US and Canada.
IAXprovider.net is the site for people who want to network their Asterisk systems (IAX is the protocol Asterisk uses to talk to other Asterisk instances) with other Asterisk users.
The site is intended as a hub for Asterisk users to meet up, network and take over the world of telephony.
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
The only reason to regulate a utility is when the importance of a utility to the establishment has exceded the capacity of the providers of said utility, thus requiring government imposed regulation to ensure the maintained existance of the utility for the general welfare of the people within the establishment.
VoIP is NOT essential. While it may be a novel way for a few companies to deal with communications and their costs, the POTS are by far the most essential means for people to communicate, and is in no danger of being surplanted any time in the near future.
Seriously, we need to stop legislators from making laws like this. It is pure follie to believe that it is possible to write a good law that is intended to be pre-emptive of future advances. Only fools would allow such things.
The problem with VoIP is that it isn't half as good as people think it is -- there are certainly good niche applications, and ways to use it profitably, but it simply isn't the be-all and end-all. Why do people fawn over it so much? I think it's largely because "IP" has that "k3w1" quality of the Internet in general, while phones are passe -- hardly a good way to make rational decisions.
s /HotNets0 2-IP_conquest_of_the_world_with_authors.pdf
This paper is pretty useful:
http://klamath.stanford.edu/~nickm/paper
In the meantime, VoIP grows because some countries allow it to be used for a sort of regulatory arbitrage. It popped up before the rules covered it, or they didn't know how to deal with it, so it got special favored treatment. That's not the same as saying it is "unregulated"! In the USA, long distance is almost unregulated, but the local telephone monoplies are regulated -- they have a stake in how much they can charge for VoIP calls that use their networks the same way other long distance calls do. Expect an interesting year at the FCC while this is debated.
I do not expect computer-to-computer VoIP to be regulated (in the USA) at all; it's simply not anyone's but the users' to deal with. But of course some cable or DSL providers might try to block it, in order to sell their own phone services -- that'll be interesting to watch.
VoIP will never promise that this will work perfectly without fault for legal reasons.
If VoIP starts promising me something I'll check myself into the psychward
</troll>
and all I want is dependable 911 access. 911 is a joke
Dude, just go hardcore and implant your family with Verichip, or Digital Angel. 'INSERT catchy_slogan_thing INTO POST FROM SUBJECT WHERE NAME LIKE missedperception'; "Forget 911 go private consumer based ultra neeto protection. Fun for the cattle and dogs, and now the whole family!"
MoFscker
The same thing is keeping me from switching to VoIP that keeps me switching to cell phone only... 911 access.
A friend of mine works for Vodafone NZ (one of two cellphone providers in New Zealand). If the police ask them to, they can pinpoint a cellphone to within a few metres. So if I dial 111 (NZ equiv to 911) the emergency services can always find me.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Great topic.
I am the IT cheif on a 300ft fishing vessel. We are in the process of rolling out a wireless network that will cover 90 percent of the areas on the boat. The network will be used by administration, engineering, the deck department, the galley and the processing staff.
One of the selling points for this network was VoIP using Pocket PC based PDAs or SIP phones. While I have found several freeware clients, I have yet to find a windows based sip server that I can test (a trial period). Merlin 1.1 is available but they seem to have abandoned it as far as the trial is concerned because it has to connect to a internet server before it will install and the server is always unavailable.
Any suggestions?
Where can I get a VoIP phone service (and a cheap yet good deal for a VoIP phone)? Can't find information on how to get VoIP in your home anywhere. I want to do this cause as I understand it, you aren't charged for long distance because (of course) your conversation is being transmitted over the internet. This means I'll have the luxury of calling anywhere in the US (and possibly the world) without a long distance fee.)
It's a similar problem with the deep discount long distance carriers in the US and elsewhere. Usable if you don't expect it to work all the time, and if you don't mind delays, echos and so on, but even for personal calls it's often better to pay the extra for a proper carrier, just to save the wasted time from having to repeat things and call back.
So, there's a market for VOIP at the cheap end of the market, and it's hurting the really low-cost carriers already, but there will remain a much bigger market for phone service that just works, all the time, has proper capacity engineering, and has a high quality connection.
I recently bought a pair of SIP phones from http://www.sipphone.com , I mailed one to a friend in Germany (the shipping and duties were terrible BTW). Just got it working, it's a little fussy about firewalls... but it's clear as a bell. Now I'm just getting my other friends to get the same device... very cool. No, I have no stock in the phone, but I DO LIKE IT.
There's a simple solution for that. It's called a cell phone. Works great during a powercut. Welcome to the late, rather than the early 20th century. The combination of VOIP and cell phone gives you high availability *and* cheapness.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Of course, since I have A$30 a month free on voice calls, but data costs A$.0055/k, that's going to be tricky. Also, there's nothing to stop mobile providers blocking the service. I can't connect to ICQ using Agile Messenger, nor can people surf my phone if I run an httpd.
Giant, wheezing, pus-oozing corporations pull themselves up the stairs and through the open door of the "place where great ideas are discussed(tm)" whereupon they recline upon the new technology with their shit-caked, impossibly fat asses and proceed to absorb every last molecule of joy out of the room to the tune of buzzing horseflies the size of dinette sets and ROI estimates.
Cool... are they hiring?
NAT prevents this straightforward implementation, which must make telcos very happy.
OK, so you call 911 (or 111) and they dont get an address.
They then contact your provider, the provider says "need a court order to give out that info, sorry",
law enforcement gets an order from a judge,
your providers legal department finally gets it faxed over,
the troll that can collect the information is out to lunch (pause 1 hour), he gets the info, hands it back to legal,
a week later when your local law enforcement finally gets the info your sorry a*& has been eaten in a bold and gloryous act of canabalism by the other people your a&^ got lost with, but it is ok because THEY will be found.
No thanks.
By the way I have vonage and they will let you configure 911 to your local station. Only thing is if you use it at multi locations for any reason it will only route to the PD you set it up for.
Stooge
.adios/losers ~snake
Tech predictions for 2004
It includes VOIP as well...
That might be how it works in your country.
Telcos in NZ don't go through the bullcrap you describe if the request comes from emergency services. We still have some common sense in this country, although that is evaporating as we become more like america.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Over the next year we are going to all VoIP for all users that are not in our call center. We currently have about 75 phones in use. Pretty cool getting your Voice mail as a wav file in your email.
Losers whine about doing their best
Winners go home and f*ck the prom queen!
I listened to some of the FCC discussion on CSPAN, and with all the mindless "let VOIP be free" perspectives being spouted here, let me raise a few of the more valid concerns I heard with letting VOIP go completely unregulated (and forecasting a dramatic drop in POTS usage as broadband spreads and people use it for phone):
1. Emergency use:
VOIP will not have the level of reliability of POTS, especially during natural disasters and other emergencies. In theory an IP network can be made just as reliable, but the simple issue of powering the phones is a big issue... the phone system generally has been significantly more reliable than the power system. With a VOIP phone, you're dead if you lose power. Traditional phones keep going.
This may seem like a small issue, but an example cited during the hearing was a major weather-related power outage in California, where the utility determined after the fact that customers were less annoyed by the fact that the power was off than the fact that the phone system at the power company was not equipped to give them good repair status information. People count on the phone system, and it needs to be there, especially for 911 emergency use.
2. Funding and effectiveness of 911
The 911 system is funded by POTS and cellular surcharges. Even a 25% drop in POTS usage due to VOIP would be disasterous from a funding perspective. And remember that when you call 911 from a landline (and in more and more areas, cellular), they know where you are. VOIP is extremely far away from having any sort of location capability.
3. Funding of Universal Access
Everyone in the country has access to phone service, no matter how rural / remote they are. This has been a tremendously important program, but would have funding problems similar to 911 if a big chunk of POTS goes away.
Anyway, my point is that despite how "retro" POTS is technically, it has significant merits that VOIP currently does not provide. I'm not suggesting that any of the problems described above are unsolveable for VOIP, but I think it's awfully unlikely that "market forces" will magically provide the answers. There needs to be some regulation in order that the good in POTS is preserved going forward.
Make me your friend; my fans get +1 comment scores.
As someone who works in this industry, I thought I'd share some of the future of telecomm for those who aren't 'in the know'. All communication lines going to any endpoint (home, business, sensors, etc) are quickly moving to an IP based data network. Unfortunately, there are two problems that governments and current telephone companies face:
:-)
1) Roughly 50% of their voice revenue stream comes from per minute connection charges, other carrier access charges, & regulation charges (govn't). These will evaporate when subscribers move to data driven VoIP (ie: you pay a flat fee for DSL or cable modem bandwidth now, and it can run all your voice calls to anywhere in the world). Eventually the PSTN connection part will no longer be necessary, so Vonage will disappear as we know it today, but it has finally woken up the telcos to what the future will bring.
2) Pretty much the other half of their revenue stream comes from the 'premium' voice feature services (call waiting, text messaging, etc), all of which are quickly moving from the class 5 switch into the phones themselves (aka: free).
What do you do when your primary revenue stream evaporates? Fight it in the courts or with govn't officials. Remember, govn'ts have been taking a nice chunk of that revenue for themselves as well.
We will have to move to a bandwidth & quality of service (QoS) based payment style. A minimum bandwidth is given for a flat rate (which will include -all- voice), and extra bandwidth will be provided on demand at an agreed QoS. The higher the bandwidth & QoS, the higher the fee.
Things to watch out for: VoIP everywhere, SIP phones/services, VoWLAN, current voice carriers moving their infrastructure to their IP networks, and govn't regulations dictating that comm lines (called data services & unregulated) become regulated for QoS.
The companies that move to this model last will not survive. They aren't going to like this.
Make me your friend; my fans get +1 comment scores.
A land line without service (i.e. no dial tone) can't call 911 or anything else.
VoIP is different from WWW, P2P, and the other Internet services you mentioned: when it replaces a landline, it is an *essential service*. However, as it is delivered in a much more open, competitive environment from POTS of the Bell era, it is also different from the tarrifed landline service. Some of the regulations that protected the "natural monopoly" of landline corporations, like the Bells, and protected us from them, don't apply. But some do. We will need a good public discussion of what minimum regulations are necessary, to protect consumers' privacy, freedom of choice, and quality of the essential service. We also need consensus on how to protect entrepreneurs from the crushing competition of the incumbent carriers, including cable and other WAN service providers. Especially in the absence of anyone resembling a visionary in Washington, we at the bleeding edge of VoIP experimentation must formulate policies that protect our communities as we switch to this powerful 3rd Millennium platform. Or some clown politician in some corporation's pocket will ruin it all for us, once the money becomes irresistable.
--
make install -not war
Does anyone have a link to VOIP software that allows directly connecting to an IP, and is free and open source? Skype has great sound quality, but I am worried about their honesty.
What other VOIP software is out there for making direct calls with no intermediary elements, even if it is not free and open source?
"Look closely at a dump of the binary. What do you see?"
What do YOU see? I see nothing that immediately raises questions.
www.vonage.com
There are others too, but I don't know them off the top of my head.
Soccer Goal Plans
Marcelo,
Could you recommend VOIP software to be used to connect directly from one computer to another, without an intermediary, using the sound cards in the computers? Is there any such software that is open source? I don't see links to such software on your web site.
Now that the national do-not-call registry is in place, telephone slammers everywhere are looking for a new outlet. Well, you can bet that they are going to start looking at VoIP telephones as prime candidates for telemarketing; and to make this happen they will be establishing strong business alliances with VoIP providers.
This will cash-infuse VoIP businesses like Vonage, which will help them beat the POTS soundly on dollar value. All of this is going to get further momentum as companies like AT&T start to get entrenched in the VoIP market.
With that said, the last technological hurdle is to integrated your VoIP communication with various modes of communication (email, fax, online chat, voice) on multiple devices (PC, telephone and cellphone).
Imagine if I could select "Joe" from my address book and then choose how I want to communicate. If Joe is sitting at his computer I could select an online chat (they call it instant messaging now, it use to be talkd), or if I was at my PC and I wanted to send Joe a printed document I could fax it to him.
Once you break the confines of your plain old telephone service, all of these convergences are possible. VoIP will breakout as these become available, and the spammers are going to subsidize the whole thing.
If you're an investor, I have a suspicion that AT&T will be the first company to do all of this...
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
then have the VoIP providers (Vonage, Packet8, etc) band together so a Vonage user can call a Packet8 user without going through the PSTN. This will be a must if VoIP (Vonage-style) catches on.
However, I REALLY don't think the Internet could handle VoIP becoming popular. Not yet at least
I looked at the Xten software. I just want to connect with a friend in France. I don't need SIP. I would just like to use the sound card for sound. I want to avoid use of a server for making connections, because all the companies will soon begin charging for this unnecessary service.
Skype works perfectly. The sound quality is better than regular telephones. However, there are some problems: 1) Skype is made by the same people who made KaZaa. Possibly it has hidden functions like KaZaa does. I've already found that every time it is used it keeps installing itself so that it runs every time the computer is turned on. 2) Skype requires an intermediate server. I would like to connect directly to my friend's IP address. 3) I haven't verified this, but Skype seems to use a hard-coded public key, so that, even though the voice is encrypted, it would be easy for anyone to decrypt.
Skype can communicate through any firewall. If it doesn't find other ports open, it works on port 80. (For those who don't know, that's the HTTP browser port.) It would be great to find some open source software that could do that, because I don't like punching holes in firewalls. (However, if voice can go through port 80, so can absolutely anything else.)
Are you associated with Xten? I notice you say, "... our X-Lite softphone...". Your resume looks interesting, but I don't see any mention of XTen.
Mobilix got a forced namechange a while back, and that name was a far cry from the main characters.