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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?"
I don't really know too much about VoIP, but what happens when the power goes out? Like I've only had 4 power outages in the last 10 or so years, but still, what if it happens? I know one advantage POTS has is that it usually works... Having VoIP for voice calls overseas is great, but what if the POTS system is gone, power is out, and people can't call for help?
Course my telco has never really caused me grief so I'm not biased against them.
Why IP and not by e-mail address? Think about it, e-mail is a way for some one to contact you through text, well why not just say that e-mail is a way to contact you which ever way you wish. Why not have everything done to your e-mail address?
Then if you have a cell phone and a home phone why not have it setup like cell.myaddress@host.com? Dialing by IP would be too much to remember. I can hardly remember a regular phone number now! But I know just about every one's e-mail address by heart because it's just english and not a string of numbers.
Why? Local IP access for too many Internet users is still limited by 56Kb/s dialup, which is too slow for reliable, comprehensible voice exchange. Providers emerging from the rat's nest of former state telco monopolies have been unable to introduce anything remotely resembling a widespread DSL service at a sensible cost (remember ISDN? :-)
Perhaps in city areas in the USA we will see VoIP start to make it, but for the real world it's simply a myth (but I would adore to be proved wrong!)
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.