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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?
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.
If they really wanted to foster "development, delivery, and adoption," they'd use open standards instead of their proprietary specs.
Indeed... this from TomsNetworking: "The VIIP program is based on "proprietary specifications" created by AT&T and is designed to "stimulate and foster" applications and devices compatible with AT&T's VoIP services."
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 +++
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.
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
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?
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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.
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
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.