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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."
Unfortunately the people that control the bandwith that we could use to support this "grassroots" VOIP campaign have very powerful government lobbies. We aren't going to get very far before the government oversteps its bounds and protects the large conglomerates.
He mentions that the mobile phone markets were a "disruptive technology" against the 125 year old wired telephone business. The single thing he fails to recognize is that the wired phone companies have the largest stakes in the best wireless networks out there (AT&T/Cingular, Verizon, etc).
He then glazes over the billing possibilities as you jump from router to router. We aren't talking about a cell phone here. We are talking about the possibility of a wireless card in a pocketPC to be used as a phone. It's a bit harder for Joe Blow to get a hacked/stolen SIM card for his phone. It's not quite as hard to get a software program that doesn't give billing information that is tracked back to that "phone" user.
The phone companies will compete by lobbying making sure that any startup VOIP phone company has to pay the same taxes and fees, and has to provide 911 and wiretapping, etc.
Don't you need an ADSL/Cable connection to that little router? Yes, I know you can have your packets hop over to the next router and so on, but the article is still pretty optimistic.
(and, yes, I did RTFA)
Let's face it: if the big telcos aren't dead by now, this means they are not going to die anytime soon. I doubt Verizon is quaking in its boots right now...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Take care!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Soon enough they'll regulate the hell out of VoIP and similar to save the phone companies. Next thing you know AIM will be ruled a telephone company because of the "talk" feature.
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.
so, whats stopping the big guys from buying these in bulk for under $79 (after bulk discount)
if they get it cheap then they can setup quickly, and still gouge you for the profit.
You can always do it cheaper if reliability and availability are not important. My wireline telephone just works. I've had one outage in the past 15 years. I've never had a dropped call. The switch never crashes, get infected with viruses, or demands that I upgrade to MS Telephone 2.0. It provides battery power to my telephone, ensuring that it still works even during blackouts and storms. It provides enhanced 911 service if I need it.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I've setup a Linux box and Asterisk along with a couple Grandstream IP phones. The quality was as good as a landline phone, and we'll probably be rolling out a test next year sometime, putting phones in all the classrooms (we're a public school). One card in the server to get us an outside line and we're set....
As soon as wireless VOIP phones come down in price, I'll be running my own wireless service for myself. I plan on setting up an Asterix server at home plugged into my landline. I can then use my VOIP phone anywhere in the world to call!
Being able to cheaply setup VOIP using your existing landline at home will decimate cell service as soon as more WIFI hotspots get out. IDT is already looking at this as a replacement for cell services.
What, me worry?
You need more bandwidth than you think.
Remember, ADSL and cable are asymmetric. That upstream bandwith is usually 256-384k. Each VoIP call is going to take anywhere between 24 and 64k of that just for the audio. Add on to that the administration overhead (UDP/IP and whatever stream management protocol you're using), and it starts to chew away at your bandwidth.
Additionally, the connection you've got is designed for bursty traffic. VoIP is most definitely NOT bursty (unless you use silence suppression, which I've yet to see a vendor get right). If you packet delay gets over 150ms, you're going to be upset. Jitter larger than about 50-80ms is going to screw with your call quality. I've done VoIP networks, and can attest to the catestrophic effects of just a small amount of jitter when you start to get near your 150ms limit.
Don't get me wrong: VoIP is here and going strong. But it's doing so in high-quality networks that can afford to supply fixed-bandwidth reservation, , not commodity broadband products.
note there's no QoS with VoIP suppliers...
if they've not got a highly resilient route onto the 'net then they are at the mercy of their uplink ISP(s).
Think 911 (or equiv) service going down for days on end as the DSL line driving the VoIP was down.......not good.
They will have to collect 911 taxes, Federal Taxes and buy business licenses. While VOIP may be nice if there is a power failure everyone with a desktop will be offline and the cell phones will become quickly over loaded. Even during the recent black out in the NE USA the local telephone service worked flawlessly. ISP's will need to have reliable backup genarators which are not cheap to buy and maintain.
I'm a vonage customer. I shed my dependance on the local telco with great pleasure, and a bit of egotisitcal pride. Still, having used it for about 8 months, I've come to this conclusion: it ain't for everyone.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going back. But I can't imagine my neighbors buying into what RXC suggests. First of all, there's a reliability issue. Folks need to have 911 service available. They need to be able to call the power company in the event of an outage. They need the phone to be a *LOT* more reliable than current VOIP is.
For me, when the power goes out in our neighborhood, it doesn't matter that I've got my VOIP device connected to a UPS. When the neighborhood loses power, my broadband internet loses connectivity. No internet, no phone. No phone, no way to call the power company to report an outage. It gets worse if you imagine someone needing emergency services (e.g. 911) during a power outage.
It's a nice theory, but it doesn't scale. And reliability is the limitation. Right now, I (personally) can put up with the lack of reliability because I know that my neighbors have nice reliable land line based phones, and in a pinch, I can pester one of them to make a phone call. (I've got good neighbors, all of whom are willing to help each other out in a pinch.) But if the entire neighborhood were on VOIP, we'd all suffer. VOIP today just doesn't have the reliability to scale. Some of us who are willing to put up with the occasional echoes, inconsistent quality, and lower reliability (in exchange for much lower cost). But we can't all do that. We rely on some of the neighborhood to have a real and reliable phone service. VOIP isn't there yet. So it won't scale as far as a neighborhood. Much less become a "disruptive technology".
$.02
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Just as an example. Comcast, the very company that is talking about larger VOIP rollouts since it has "millions" of customers on its broadband service, can't even keep the broadband service running this morning. They are having nation wide outages. Broadband is not considered by the government to be an Infrastructure service yet, like electricity, natural gas, telco. Thus it does not get the same level of guaranteed uptime. When broadband goes down, so will your VOIP. My telco phone just always works. That is what people expect.
Voice network hacking has gone overlooked by both hackers and security professionals alike. With enough know-how, one can hack a PBX and make long distance calls, copy voice mail, do all kinds of evil stuff. The stakes were raised when they (the voicemail companies) tied voicemail and e-mail together.
I would hazard to say that many companies voice networks are just as vulnerable as their data networks, or even moreso, but they are not targetted as much, so they do not get as much attention.
What about critical services, such as 911 service? Are going to equip all of your customers with backup generators to power their VOIP phones and other network devices (router) during a power outage?
You might say to me, "well, people today use cellphones as their primary means of communications - and they are responsible to ensure it is charged up in the event of an emergency". That may be true. However, everyone does not have cell phone service - or wants cell phone service for that matter. As a common carrier, phone companies have a responsibility to provide dialtone for everyone who wants it - and as a result provide emergency services.
It is also prohibitively costly to provide fibre to every location - particularly in rural areas. Given that, broadband service will not be available to drive VOIP solutions.
If we decide to drop copper as an alternative, then we will lose big when some event occurs that prevents a VOIP user from getting a critical emergency call through - and the resulting lawsuits and regulations will stifle growth and acceptance of VOIP as a viable universal solution.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Your roaming policy was just too restrictive.
Would I trade the reliability of my landline (I can't remember losing service in the past ... 15 years ?) for some ghetto rig built on consummer-level equipement running over best-effort protocol to shave a few $ from my monthly telephone bill of 25$ ? Thanks, but no thanks.
:wq
Umm does anyone else here remember the Sears/Gap/Borders are dead stories from around 1998/99 because the Mom and Pop stores would beat them thanks to ".com".
I've read the article and I'm not seeing anything different, and certainly nothing that thinks about the realities of providing secure 911 access and QoS over a WiFi router and ADSL.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Aren't VOIP carriers actually piggy backing on resources provided by the voice carriers in the first place?
If you're using DSL from your phoneco then sure. You have to remember that VoIP goes all over IP. You don't need expensive (and proprietary) TelCo analog switching equipment, just the bandwidth capacity to carry the voice traffic.
If I worked for a manufacturer of the old POTS switching equipment, I'd be getting ready to look for a new job in a few years. Unless moving to the third world to support their legacy stuff is your cup of tea.
Trolling is a art,
I already effectively have a whitelist on my phone.
If the number is not in my address book, the phone does not ring, and goes straight
to voicemail.
If it is someone I wanted to talk to, and they left a voicemail, I can return the call at my leisure and perhaps add their number to the whitelist.
Yes, that's exactly what they're going to do; that's what SIP is for. Every time you establish your presence on a new network, whether it's wifi, GSM, work, home, or whatever, your phone will contact your registrar and add this location to the list of places you might possibly be reached. Ideally you'll have a single number that will try to find you at all of your currently registered locations, possibly modified by preferences or priorities you set up. If the network thinks you're reachable on your cell, it will ring it. If you're out of range or in a bad coverage area (inside your office say), but registered on a wifi network, it will ring you via the wifi instead. There's not that much to a SIP user agent; a 400 MHz processor wouldn't even notice the effort of sending the handful of messages that it takes to keep your location updated.
*sigh*
:-)
First off, the minute you go from a VOIP endpoint to the POTS phone system (you know, to route calls to legacy landline equipment) you are then classified as a phone company. This is where the tarrifs come in. This might not be the case if you just went from VOIP to Cellular, not 100% positive.
Next up, while the Vonage/Packet8 endpoints work well, it can be a pain deploying a reliable VOIP network. Qualtiy of service is a must, because a large email with an attachment can totally take out audio in one direction for a few seconds.
VOIP is neat, I think it will seriously cut into the long distance profits, but *I* firmly believe wireless phones are more of a threat to landline POTS service. I think the phone companies need to replace the legacy ESS5a switches with something newer, capable of dropping 50mbps to each copper customer.
Personally I plan to move my phone lines to a message rate service, it's incoming only landline. I believe it is about $10 a month. This supports the excuse to have a PBX at home
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
"Now how is Verizon going to compete with that?"
You see there are these things that companies buy called laws....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Ironic that I use the local telco company for DSL, and my wireless router can be used to take away business from them. ;)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
PBX Vulnerability Analysis: Finding Holes in your PBX Before Someone Else Does
Its a 60-page PDF that covers all of the features included in most PBX's that can be exploited and/or manipulated.
If you're a security engineer I HIGHLY recommend it. Even if you're just the company's Network Admin that's also responsible for the PBX, check it out. What a cool line on your resume? How about "Reduced company's monthly phone bill by XX% (thing BIG) via PBX audit" Nothing says "You're Hired!" better than that.(Hint: turn off automatic-forwarding by default to start. People config their work phone to forward to their house over the night/weekend, and their long-distance friends just call the company's Toll Free number and get routed to the employee's house. They chat, company picks up the tab. Also look into setting up SMDR or CDR (google for it) on the PBX, connect a serial cable to the switch, and do some simple call accounting to determine who's doing what on your phone lines all day.
The tin-foil hat wearers are going to flame me a new one, but really this is just like sniffing your ethernet traffic to see if people are goofing off on the web all day. Plus, you're not actually LISTENING to whats said on the calls, you're just logging that extension x1234 called 978-555-1212 fifty times in the last month. Maybe that's a legit call, maybe its their wife/husband and they're goofing off. Or hell, maybe you figure out that you're under-utilizing your trunks, and can get rid of that extra T1 without causing inbound calls to get busy signals, or outbound calls to not get an outside line. Tell the PHB's to roll the first month's savings into your bonus plan :-)
And, as a turnaround question, have people found that their PBX experience translates into small-mid scale VoIP gigs, and if so, how? With a decent amount of PBX (non-voip) switch management under my belt, is it worth doing the WRT54G VoIP setup for the experience, or should I just try to find a job at a company that's doing 'real' voip?