Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Continued Advance of VoIP

Posted by Hemos on from the like-a-glacier-coming-down dept.

A reader writes: "With the recent VoIP ruling from the FCC, it appears that the playing field in the US is ready for take off. There's been some more coverage on that, but companies are begining to wonder about how to manage all of this - but PMC-Sierra (one of the big chip makers) has announced additional support for it."

3 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Bandwidth too please by Magickcat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unless more basic infrastructure impovements are made in providing decent bandwidth to these technologies, I'm not likely to enjoy VoIP terribly much.

    --

    Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.

  2. Unmetered phone ... unmetered electric by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How ironic. In the 1960's, there was a big push for all-electric homes (electric heat, electric hot water heaters, electric stoves) because nuclear power promised to make electricity so inexpensive, it wouldn't be worth metering -- we'd all someday just pay a flat monthly rate to keep the grid and the plants maintained.

    Well, we all know how that particular story ended up. But who would have imagined, back in the days of 40 cent per minute interstate calling, that someday telephone service would become so cheap that it wouldn't be worth metering? Unmetered telephone service? Now you're just crazy talking!

    I suppose it's somewhat ironic (in an Alanis Morrisette fashion, not true irony) that it's really just people problems, not technology problems, that we have to solve in order to make these things come true.

    --
    Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
  3. It's about business, not technology!!! by thpr · · Score: 4, Insightful
    VoIP was technically possible in 1995 or so. Just like streaming a movie over a high speed Internet connection is theoretically possible today. It just takes time to commercialize. The reason it is getting so much attention now is that: (1) The networking industry is solving the latency problems that plagued voice (2) Advanced audio codecs are providing high quality voice in much smaller packets, improving service levels (3) data traffic dwarfs voice traffic, so it's possible to put the voice onto the network as "high quality traffic" and get the required throughput and completely avoiding the entire telephone network support and infrastructure cost (4) It's cheap as all get out in comparison to PSTN service.

    What will further delay VoIP from entirely killing the PSTN, smong other things, are (1) The vendors (bad vendors!) are doing a Microsoft-like embrace-and-extend of SIP (the session initiation protocol used to set up a VoIP call) (2) Meeting regulations like CALEA (the law enforcement act that gives the government the power to tap the phones) (3) Truly connecting Voice Over IP "islands"... because how to you share IP addresses of phones and maintain privacy (like suppressing caller ID)... and the best savings come when you can remove the PSTN (public switched telephone network) entirely.