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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."
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"
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?
A - Cable modems or non-phone based "DSL" (wireless broadband, etc.)
B - Business uses - especially intersite PBX bridging and off-site extensions
C - Cheap international
D - A great deal of POTS service network is running or planning to run VOIP behind the scenes instead of analog connection with SS7 control protocol.
HTH
Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
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
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.
This was probably what you were looking for, and it took me all of a few seconds to find it.
bork bork bork!
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
What I did was check out VoicePulse [www.voicepulse.com], in particular their Connect! program. If all you need is outbound calling, set up a PC running asterisk [www.asterisk.org] server and for 2.95 c/min you can make all the out bound long distance calls you need. If that number is zero, your cost will be exactly that, zero.
For an additional $7.95/month you can get unlimited inbound calls to a number of your choice.
I am telling you, when you do the math, this is nearly unbeatable.
Ready to drop SBC any moment now if only I didn't have Adelphia for a cable company...
PaulW, IT Consultant
"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many from which to choose."
The "proprietary specifications", in this case, define a set of choices amongs the bazillions of possible combinations of competing VoIP protocols that AT&T wants to use in their network. H.323? H.248? RFC 3261? MGCP? SGCP? SCCP? SIP? OSP? SAP? RVP? G.723? G.729? G.729A? All of these are open standards, and AT&T's standards are perfectly "open" in that they're giving them away to companies so that those companies know what features AT&T will want. There's not just one way to build a VoIP network, and if you're going to have a coherent one that works, you're going to need to specify which standards you're using.
They've also got a spec for special services that aren't currently well standardized.
Here's the original press release from which DeviceForge was cribbing. You can find lots more details on the AT&T site from there.
AT&T has been working on this for many years now (they started really investigating VoIP back in '98 as part of their plan to use their (then) vast cable network to offer phone service in competition with the baby bells.)
This is not proprietary in the way you likely think it is. All of their work has been based on open standards (of which there is a confusion! of conflicting open standards). VoIP equipment vendors all tend to implement "something" which is sort of like some published standard but rarely works with other vendors equipment.
AT&T through years of work cobbled together guidelines to ensure interoperability. AT&T has made those guidelines public now and is inviting vendors to conform to them.
It is proprietary only in the sense of having been developed at AT&T. It isn't licensed. AT&T is a customer and, as a customer, has published its wish list for vendors... which is why this is intended to foster development...
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
Well I have let my two sisters kids live here for a bit for school purposes (community college within 1/4 mile or so). They had been running up some massive long distance bills, now with VOIP over my cable modem it costs me 29.99 a month to let em have at it all they like instead of trying to stop some of their calls that previously added up to well over a hundred dollar phone bill on a fairly regular basis.
Even maintaining a single POTS line with no long distance for emergency purposes basically i'm making out pretty well on the deal.
Guess it depends on each persons situation
*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