Do-It-Yourself VOIP Telco

DamnYankee writes "Robert X. Cringley predicts the coming demise of the landline telco monopolies from the grassroots encroachment of VoIP and Linux on the latest generation of Wifi routers. According to Bob, 'The result is a system with economics with which a traditional local phone company simply can't compete'. With Linux capabilities and builtin VoIP any Mom and Pop can become the local equivalent of a cellular phone company for the price of $79 Wifi router. Now how is Verizon going to compete with that? Get the full scoop from the man himself."

Comments

big companies CAN change

[magarity]

a system with economics with which a traditional local phone company simply can't compete'

How many times have we heard that (insert some innovation here) will lead to the demise of (insert traditional provider here). Look, the only times when large established providers of a given good or service are eliminated by something new is when entrenched management gets hubris and thinks the new thing is not worth their bother. If/when the existing telcos realise they need to get on this bandwagon they will, and with a vengance. You can't count out the resources they can bring to bear until they don't and are truly out.

Re:big companies CAN change

[Big_Al_B]

The entrenched telcos seem far more like the RIAA/MPAA to me; they have this new fangled competitor looming on the horizon and instead of pouring money into R&D are pouring it into the legal department and campaign contributions instead.

The company I work for is a "traditional" regional IXC/CLEC. We've poured mucho dinero into R&D on packetizing and "converging" our network. After much blood, sweat, and tears, we've been able to provide a converged IP service that really doesn't suck. But, packets and Wi-Fi are not the magic bullets that some would believe.

Sure, anyone with a strong Wi-Fi antenna and a few IADs strewn about can make real-time interactive audio work. That's not the challenge. The challenge really lies in providing carrier-class services over IP. People expect phones to work, 100% of the time, between any two handsets worldwide. And they want audio quality and precision clarity.

In that regard solutions are still expensive to provide, and expensive to purchase. IP savvy switches are still buggy, feature-sparse, and prone to audio quality issues. Your average DMS and 5ESS may use Model T technology and take up a whole lot of bays, but for making plain old phone calls, it'll outperform the Ferrari's of the IP world.

Add up consumer broadband transport, untamed Internet ebbs and flows, Wi-Fi frequencies that compete moment-to-moment with cordless phones and microwaves, and you've got a lot of unsatisfied neighbors dropping your shiny new home telco for an old princess phone and an RBOC.

Re:not gonna happen, the lobbies are too powerful

[garcia]

And that brings up another problem - who's gonna stop spammers from dialing my VoIP phone from China for the sake of playing a pre-recorded advertisement in my ear?

Ahh, the one good thing about VoIP. Full control over what comes in. I get software that is custom. I get to decide who/what/where gets to call me.

Don't want China ads coming in? Block everything from China. Only want whitelisted people to call you? So be it. Want the phone to ask you if you want to accept a call or block the IP/range?

All doable.