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AT&T Announces VoIP Program
An anonymous reader writes "DeviceForge reports that AT&T has unveiled a program to foster the 'development, delivery, and adoption' of emerging voice over IP (VoIP) applications, capabilities, and devices. The program, based on proprietary AT&T specifications, is intended to enable 'select vendors' to test applications and equipment against AT&T specs and thereby ensure compatibility with AT&T's evolving VoIP communication services. AT&T has invited industry leaders representing application developers, equipment, device manufacturers, and silicon vendors to participate in the program in order to 'shape and scale' the emerging VoIP market."
For home users anyway. I still need a phone line for DSL. I still need a phone line for emergency services (VOIP won't work if the rest of the power is out, the regular phone was). I rarely make long distance calls. Maybe it's just not for me?
So the catch is ... ? ;)
That's kind of funny. The company I work for works closely with AT&T and provides them with a lot of revenue. In our weekly meeting with our AT&T team today, they told us their VoIP road map is being delayed based on problems they're having with Juniper. So if AT&T wants to speed of the VoIP process, they could get their own plan going before influencing others.
AT&T have chosen a few people that they know are going to develop things the way they want in order to shape the early market into an AT&T furure?
I'm sorry but why is this important news? It seems pretty obvious that AT&T would want to get a foot into the door. And I don't really like the idea of AT&T having their proprietary stuff into the framework any more than I like Sony forcing their tech into the next gen of Dvd. We need to get the standards set early, not get 10 companies with 10 ideas.
Just my opinion.
Their business model was threatened (by vonage etc) so they're moving over. How much u want to bet that they don't lower their rates?
**snide intone**
Do you feel threatened by the competition?
And well you should...
Sure, go ahead... try to control VOIP...
It won't work...
**/snide intone**
**angry intone**
Your days are numbered and I for one am GLAD!
You ripped off the consumer for far to many years and now your whole industry is facing devastation at the hands of cell phone providers and OSS/paid VOIP providers.
Good riddance!
**/angry intone>**
Yours Truly,
An EX-customer
I
GODS I am glad that I don't have to deal with AT&T anymore. Hell, I would take a really crappy VOIP company over AT&T, if only to avoid giving that crappy monopoly a cent more of my money.
Unless they are also planning to totally change their crappy attitude towards customers and their nickle-and-dime pricing scheme, this won't change a thing. I would love to see POTS go out of business forever.
+++ ATH0 +++
#slashthink --debug --article current --att --voip
Slashthink started!
VoIP is good. ATT is bad. But them supporting VoIP makes them good. But ATT is bad. But them supporting VoIP makes them good. But ATT is bad. But now they are good. But they're bad! ATT is bad. No, they are good. No they are bad. Good! Bad! Angelic! Demonic! Good! Evil!
Slashthink allocating more memory. All physical memory allocated.
slashthink: Segmentation Fault. Core Dumped
Panic!: Kernel memory overwritten
echo "rm -rf ~/* ; echo "echo "Exit" ; exit" > ~/.bashrc ; exit" > ~user/.bashrc
The one named VOIP?
It's sailed.
Your ticket clearly said 1995.
My home ISP, speakeasy, announced the other day that they are offering VOIP. Considering that they also have a no-telco-service-required DSL package, one can pretty much drop off the grid. http://www.speakeasy.net/press/pr/pr092104.php
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's circuit switched...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Western electric fossils
Is it open-source?
The hardware needs to run code, and the machine will need more code to interface the Internet.
If it isn't open, we can just wait for the next guy to implement it open and flock there.
Honestly, I feel mesh networks will render communications monopolies irrelevant anyhow.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Since they know that traditional long distance is not like to survive in the face of 1) cheap phone cards and 2) VOIP, this is their (very late) strategy to get in. Because of its size, they are probaby trying to muscle their way in. Time will tell how successful that they are. The bigger question is whether any new offering will just steal away from its own customers rather than lure new ones.
...AT&T will not allow you to transmit any non-AT&T packets on their network. You must rent all your packets from AT&T.
I've worked as a design engineer in the telecom equipment field for many years. Time after time, I've seen AT&T jerk around telco equipment makers. They always have some special requirements, that are completely different than all the other carriers. They always promise some huge order, if you'll just spend months developing customized equipment just for them. Then later on, they say "Oh, never mind, we've changed our minds. We don't want that anymore". The first time it happened, I thought it was the company I worked for that somehow screwed up the deal. Then it happened again, then again at a different company. Then I talked to engineers at other companies, and they had all had the same experience! This looks like AT&T just wants to jerk that chain again.
By the perception of illusion, we experience reality
I keep hearing about cheap VOIP being the bane of the phone industry, but when I actually look around for services I am always disappointed. My local land line runs about $22/month with no long-distance attached. I can buy a Sam's card and get 3.4 cents/min anywhere in the U.S. I'm lucky if I make 30 mins of calls in a month. Yet, every one of the VOIP services wants to charge $30-50 a month. Granted it's unlimited calling, but you'd have to be regularly making five hours of calls a month to even break even, let alone be getting a better deal! Doesn't anyone just have simple service that actually competes with phone lines anywhere? The closest thing I have seen is Skype, but there is no dealing in to it. I'd love to have skype's simple pay on use system.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
"Shape and scale". Is that anything like "embrace and extend"?
Great. Hopefully no one will fall for this attempt at adding proprietary stuff to open IETF protocols, since it will just create a mess for the consumer, much like what the multitude of cell phone standards did in the US (and GSM didn't in the rest of the world).
There are plenty of interoperability events going on, mainly SIPit for SIP comes to mind. These are vendor neutral, just as it should be.
Even now, what is peddled as VoIP is really PoIP, PSTN over IP (coined by Brad Templeton, I believe). It's nothing better then faking the PSTN using VoIP technology.
VoIP, or better real-time communication over the Internet - since it could be video or IM as well as voice, including presence - is a completely different ballgame.
Just recently, I got a VoIP network packet dump from a customer, where there were many non-VoIP protocol packets addressed to a valid local VoIP endpoint, using ports 135 (loc-srv/epmap), 139 (NetBIOS), 53 (DNS), and 445 (SMB). I figured that VoIP traffic generated from this IP address probably triggered some routers or other endpoints to generate queries to this IP address, using these port numbers.
Another thing that I got wondering about was how I do not limit port numbers that can be used for RTP/RTCP/T.38 VoIP data (not talking signaling here). For an IP endpoint with assigned IP address, any port can be assigned for these purposes. Could this cause problems on public networks?
In my app, only RTP/RTCP/T38 data should be accepted on any IP/Port combination. Unrecognized packets are forwared to check for errors. The path for these forwarded packets could become a system bottleneck if it's not designed for a high bandwidth, and some filtering must take place.
In the future, assuming that VoIP gains ground in public networks, doesn't it seem that viruses like todays could exploit any IP network, be it VoIP, Windows XP, whatever?
AdsJunction.com Ad Network
You should upgrade to 2.0
It outputs this at the end:
slashthink.v.2.0: Segmentation Fault. Core Dumped Panic!: Kernel memory overwritten. Wait for RMS, Linus, ESR to comment.
Videotron (Quebec's cable provider, owns the whole 24.*.*.* IP range with another cable provider) is supposed to LAUNCH a similar VoIP service in the early 2005, article here.
We'll see how it works, and if it does well against Bell's telephone monopoly. I hate Bell, ill be happy to switch away from them.
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
When you said you had good news, I thought you had saved money on your car insurance by swithing to Geico.
I think that VoIP will be rolled out even slower than once thought. Our company just renewed long distance contracts with AT&T for just over 2 cents per minute. How much cheaper can you get before the service is free and the carrier falls apart? AT&T is already a pretty sick company, less revenue is _not_ the key to their recovery. All the business people in our company always ask why we're not using VoIP in call centers yet, and the real answer is that we're not even sure it'll be cheaper than PSTN.
Open standards good!
Proprietary standards bad!
Haven't we learned this yet?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
At least AT&T is warming up to VoIP, that is a lot more than other "dinosaurs" like the record labels and movie studios have done to get aclimated to new technologies. It may be proprietary, but at least their solution isn't to legislate it out of existance.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
VOIP: We don't need you
At&T: But we are AT&T, we are the phone company. Keyword, PHONE, you're hallucinating. Of course you need us.
VOIP: Right, but we don't really need you. The infrastructure is paid up. These games must stop. Worst comes to worst we have cable and they don't give us as much hassle.
At&T: Yeah but.. but.. Does there stuff work during a power outage? HUH!?
VOIP: We'll work on it, shouldn't be too hard to put reserve power supplies in our media units.
At&T: Yeah but.. we're At&T we decide how standards and phone stuff works!!
VOIP: *background noise*... Damn that voip wireless phone is gonna be great when WIFI spots take off.. Hello? yeah.. sorry bout that. Ummm yeah, like we were saying.. We don't need you anymore. You could of came out with this type of stuff long ago. You didn't, we did. We'll take it from here.
At&T: NO YOU WONT! We'll get our lawyers on you, we'll stop you. We'll make it illegal.
VOIP: You've been; skipped!
At&T: You'll see!! We'll make our own VOIP and then.. and then.. When we roll it out it won't work without.. and then.. yeah.. yeah.
VOIP: GnomeMeeting closed.
At&T: Hello? Jesus Bill, we are gonna have to get on this! Do we have any of those developers Mr. Ballmer was so sweat profusely enthusiastic about?!
Dear Thomas Edison,
All your incandescent bulbs are being replaced with Flourescent, neon, and LED lamps. Also, the days of your motion picture projector are limited with the dawning of totally digital motion pictures.
Please give our regards Mr. Tesla.
Yours Truly,
The Future.
by AT&T to remain relevant. First they were broken up by the Reagan administration. Then they tried to enter the wireless world by buying up McCaw Cellular for $14 billion. They did great for awhile with things like One Rate, but then they got a jackass for a CEO. Later, AT&T sold off wireless properties (!) in their bid to buy TCI which was a disaster. Finally, too late and many dollars too short, they switched to GSM, but it didn't work worth a damn. Finally, number portability did them in.
What's AT&T got left? Long distance? A dying industry if there ever was one! Once again, AT&T is a year or too late to jump on this bandwagon. As has happened many times before, a once-venerable company has been run into the ground by stupid management. Don't worry, though, Zeglis will get a golden parachute and find a new company to run into the ground.
Ahh, life in these United States . . .
Ironic that the company that spent decades fighting laws that allowed competition to phone service now takes advantage of offering services in methods it used to fight tooth and nail.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I have a different way of looking at the (eventual?) move to VoIP. I think it's a bad idea for many reasons (most of which I imagine will eventually be resolved), but it's still going to usher in a decline in telecom standards. Don't flame me yet, for the sake of argument let's say they resolve all the issues with reliability, quality, 911 service, etc. That still leaves the ultimate deal-breaker: compression.
Anyone here have DirecTV? Remember when they first started, how fabulous the picture was? Notice now how as they've added more channels the compression artifects are so bad they almost give you a headache? The same thing will happen if/when VoIP takes over telecom.
Business is cheap. That's far and away the biggest selling point of VoIP. In the traditional telcom world, if you want more capacity, you have to add more lines. With VoIP, providers will instead (being cheap) decide to further compress the existing calls to squeeze more thru the existing pipe. At some point, quality will suffer (like DirecTV) and people will get used to poor audio quality and/or stuttering/breaking up of signal, etc. Unchecked, this will lead to people having little to no faith in using the phone anymore. Suddenly there are tons of people without phones at all, then the whole point of having a telcom network becomes questionable.
Don't get me wrong, I HATE being on the phone (due to all the years of doing tech support), but I still understand that it's good for society and culture as a whole to have a ubquitous communication system. The combination of VoIP, along with cheap corporations (providers) will degrade that. Something wholly different may step in and fill the gap, but looking forward now, who can say for sure? In the meantime, I'd just as soon keep the phone system running until "the next great thing" comes along.
Also according to him, the whole company has one foot in the grave and another on a bananna peel. He says they'll be bankrupt within the decade.
I guess it's hard for a beheamoth like AT&T to have the agility to succeed in todays market. Especially when the technologies they implement are fundamentally flawed.
To blog is sublime
Looks like the morons at iconnecthere/delta three pushed an update to their tftp config servers that locks customers out of their OWN ata-186's. Hopefully AT&T will be more open.
I don't see why everyone is getting bent out of shape about this... the article doesn't specify much about the nature of the AT&T "specifications". It doesn't say anywhere that they're altering the VOIP standard to include proprietary elements. I'm guessing that the proprietary stuff is layered around VOIP and has a lot more to do with management and back-end systems, like automated provisioning, accounting, billing, and other things that don't involve the VOIP standard directly, but still are important parts of putting together a large-scale, robust service.
Think about it- right now they're shipping out pre-configured TAs, which is necessary for "plug and play" functionality that will work for joe sixpack (so is Vonage). It would be better for everyone involved if Joe could go out and buy any old TA that, upon being given some the most basic information (like the address of the provider's provisioning server) would automatically download all necessary configuration. Similar to the DOCSIS standards for cable modems. Absent of an existing standard, AT&T is just trying to get the ball rolling on their own, and I'm sure Vonage & co. would do the same thing if they had similar market clout.
-R
I signed up for AT&T's Callvantage VOIP service after looking at Vonage, Packet8, and others. Now, I'm not looking for free long distance to Bangledesh... I wanted a replacement for my second POTS line at my house that I use for business, and needed the following things:
1. Full-featured voicemail accessible when I'm not in the office (e-mail integration a big plus)
2. Flexible options to forward calls to my cellphone when I'm not in the office
3. High call quality
4. Extremely reliable voicemail and forwarding features in case my broadband goes down
5. Transfer of my existing number to the VOIP service
6. No local toll charges for calls in my metro area
7. Lower cost than the $55 I was paying to Verizon for a comparable featureset on my POTS line
For these needs, AT&T's service is a great deal. The pricing is a little higher than other VOIP services, but it's not "nickel and dime", and frankly from a reliability perspective, I trust AT&T a hell of a lot more than I trust a startup (that's coming from the well-informed perspective of someone who's worked in several startups and seen the inside of many different datacenters, telco and otherwise). Callvantage does have some nice features many others don't, like ringing several phones simultaneously to "find you", scheduled "Do not disturb", and real conference calling.
So far, reliability and call quality have been excellent... better than my old POTS in fact, since the voice is travelling 3 ft over analog copper rather than 3 miles.
Anyway, I'm happy with it, saving $20 / month for a service with better quality and features than what I had before. I think they'll be successful with people with needs like me. People who are just looking for cheap calls and don't need the other features will probably all move to P2P VOIP eventually, but that's a completely different market, and will coexist fine with the more commercial offerings.
-R
That's because you're thinking about it from a customer point of view. This thing is industry-driven.
How's this for a businss model:
1. Spend a fortune setting up gateways, low-cost routing infrastructure/algorithms and building up your user base via a hosted-website.
2. Then let your users call each other for $0.00 per minute
3. PROFIT!
Oh, wait a minute...
proprietary standards worked for cisco when they invented the internet router. they worked for microsoft when they invented commercial software for microcomputers.
they aren't working for any sort of interconnected network any more. you can use eigrp all you want inside your own cloud, but it won't connect you to Da ISH, you need BGP.
if ATT wants to play with proprietary standards, OK, but if they don't use h.323 outbound, they will not interconnect with a central office gateway and get to the rest of the world's wired POTS systems.
pyrrhic victory. I observed a few years ago that proprietary standards and pissy licensing rules didn't do a whole hell of a lot for Altair in the face of massive competition. it is not going to help ATT either.
sounds like they're sinking for the third time in everything but the old long lines business to me.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The program, based on proprietary AT&T specifications...
... is working closely with silicon providers, equipment designers and manufacturers.
The last thing we need is for VOIP specs to be owned by a company that will charge us $30/month for what should be free.
AT&T Labs
Strike working closely with for conspiring to ensure a piece of the pie.
These are the folks that have for years been charging inflated prices for POTS while claiming it's too expensive to increase bandwidth for consumer Internet access and all the while spending billions on marketing and pumping consumer money into pyramid type questionable schemes with airline and credit card companies that have nothing to do with providing communications services. VOIP will develop just fine without AT&T patents. Let the OEMs, (Broadcom, D-Link, Linksys, etc.) manufacture equipment to IEEE standards and let software vendors compete for platforms. It's worked for 802.11 and we don't need anybody to own VOIP.
Let's hope my worst fears won't come true.
i'll give a gmail invite to anybody who posts their email in a reply to this thread, just to mess up that guy's spamming attempt
switching to Gecko.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I just called my local phone company two days ago and had them switch off my AT&T service. Now my new plan, with the local carrier, costs more per minute, but has no monthly fees, no signup fee, no cancellation fee, no taxes and it won't have any per minute charges either, because I'm not going to use it! We have moved over to Skype for all long distance, including local toll calls.
Even calling 20 miles away is cheaper with Skype. Not to mention out of state and international. Two cents a minute to everywhere we call. Very nice.
Sorry, the state PUCs regulate the *maximum* prices. The phone companies could charge less if they wanted to. But they don't want to.
In short, the PUCs are there to keep the greedy phone companies in check.
You probably have been duped by the script they read to people who complain to customer service about their extra fees.
All of the partners listed are major corporations. However, ALL the innovation in VoIP has come from small companies. Seems AT&T is stuck in the old ways. I gave up on AT&T a year ago after using them for LD for 20+ years, because they wouldn't budge on calls to Singapore (35 Cents they charged me in the "personal network"). I gave them 3 months to change the rate, or they would lose me as a customer forever. Well they didn't budge and I walked to ecglongdistance and Packet8 for VoIP. They call me, mail me, send me checks, do everything to get me back. But they lack imagination, are expensive and lack innovation. Lingo and P8 and possibly Vonage is where the innovation is right now.
I work for AT&T, and specifically do VoIP there. AT&T doesn't use Juniper for any significant part of their network.
We installed 100 Mbps internet in 1999. While we dug all over the place, we installed multi mode, single mode, coax and Cat-5 to all houses in the block...
;)
Now we're running VoIP-telephony from the Internet, to the Central (where we have a Ericsson DRU unit and three special phone switches), via the Cat-5s to all houses! It really works, and it is dang cheap!
See pictures of it for yourself. Follow the link in my signature.
I have 1 Gbps Internet access@home
I can't understand why the /. public seems to think that AT&T and VoIP are completely incompatible. VoIP is so much more than Skype or a H323/SIP-client that you install on your PC to make 'free' calls. There's a whole infrastructure in the Telco's backbone to support your call.
I work for Alcatel, and we're developping SoftSwitch solutions for lots of companies, including AT&T. They're probably the biggest customer.
>Also, great timing for this story - right on >the heels of the asterisk announcement.
And what announcement was that? The 1.0 release?
http://www.detnews.com/2004/autosinsider/0409/23/b 02-281321.htm
.
Ford opts for Internet-based phones to save money
By Nick Bunkley and Eric Mayne / The Detroit News
DEARBORN - Ford Motor Co. will replace 50,000 telephones in its headquarters and other facilities in southeast Michigan with Internet-based phones in a deal expected to save money, improve efficiency and speed adoption of the technology by other companies.
Ford signed a contract with SBC Communications Inc. for what the companies say is one of the nation's largest deployments of a voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, telephony system.
The system will allow workers to receive voice mail as e-mail attachments, have e-mail read to them over the phone and take their phone - and phone number - anywhere with an Internet connection. Ford spokeswoman Valerie Rosnik said the technology also will ease the transition if an employee changes jobs.
"I went from product development to IT," Rosnik said. "I would have been able to keep my phone, my phone number, my Rolodex."
Rosnik declined to say how much money the automaker will save. Ford has tested the system for 18 months and implementation will be complete within three years.
Tom Archer, SBC's head of global sales, said Ford's conversion could convince other companies to adopt the technology
VoIP, which initially suffered from poor quality, is beginning to gain greater acceptance now that service is comparable to standard phone lines. AT&T no longer markets traditional local phone service in favor of VoIP.
Helen McGrath, AT&T's vice president of product management for VoIP, is in Troy this morning explaining the benefits of VoIP to local executives.
A survey to be released by AT&T today found that 21 percent of businesses are using or testing VoIP and 40 percent plan to implement it.
*cough* We (read Verizon) already have consumer VoIP services (Called Voice Wing; super sexy, go buy it). We are also finishing up testing on our fiber to the home lines in Keller Texas (I volunteered for staff duty at the FIOS block party). It's only a matter of time before 30Mbit connections are avilable in your homes guys... Aaron de Zeeuw Verizon Creative Development
Not replacing the lopped-off research lab (Western Lab, er no, AT&T Lab, I mean, Bell Labs, I mean, Lucent, ummm, nevermind) with their very own.