Slashdot Mirror
VoIP Predictions for 2005
phoneboy writes "There was much progress in the VoIP world in 2004, though not as much as Voxilla predicted exactly one year ago. Will 2005 accelerate the pace of change? We at Voxilla think so. In our One Look Back, Two Steps Forward article, we take a peek back at our predicitions we made in 2004 and don the swami cap as we look boldly into the near future of the phone."
And ironically enough, that's where VoIP could shine -- imagine transmitting your voice with 128kbps MP3 encoding. It might not matter quite so much for personal use, but it would kick ass for speaker-phone teleconferencing.
VoIP providers will be expected to conform to CALEA. The federal government will try to get VoIP providers to make their software fully wiretapable which will do one of two things probably. It'll either put open source developers using encryption at odds with federal policy or require that we all expose ourselves online.
You know it's sad when your father, someone who spent 27 years in the U.S military and federal law enforcement looks at you dead seriously and says that generally speaking the biggest lie you'll hear from the federal government is: "we're from the government, we're hear to help you." I'll never forget my dad reading about Carnivore and realizing that his reaction to it was probably a good example of why he retired from federal law enforcement under him. How we cheered when Carnivore proved to be a failure.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Got a piano tied to your ass? Move to the city or accept that for you, rural living is the right choice, with all the trade-offs entailed.
I grew up rural, moved to the city, never looked back. Sitting in the country whining about how I couldn't get a good cup of cappucino -- and implying that the government ought to fix things so that I could -- didn't cross my mind.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Pricing advantages will be evened out when the individual states tax VOIP into oblivion. The Wall Street Journal had a writeup about state governors eyeing this as a real cash cow (cant re. which issue, between 20 december 2004 and 29 december).
I predict an option for the regular Cellular Phone with VoIP capability to transmit to you nearby vehicle with a VoIP to Cellular Network gateway. That way the Phone on hand doesn't use as much energy to transmit and doesn't have the fear to scramble nearby brains with radio electromagnetic signals. Car to Car networks woulds only increase the likelyhood of this prediction.
I also predict that business class phones will become more popular in the home with features like xfer, speaker, conference calling etc.
Video phones will pick up slightly by the end of the year, but for the most part they will still be too expensive for general consumer use. I think cell-phone style hands free kits will be more popular than video phones in the short term.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
voip phones that look, *sound* and feel like regular phones.
...come to think of it, why do we have cord heatsets for (regular) cord phones and cordless headsets for cordless phones?
if you want people to think you know what you are talking about, just put ".com" at the end of everything you say.com
CALEA has been a consideration for VoIP service providers (like the one I work for) for several years already.
And my office has used PoE switches for our VoIP phones (which have over 40 ringtones, some 38 of which are mightly annoying) for several years.
Let me know when you and your rich urban tech buddies take the cash being offered for wireless connectivity that is sitting begging out here in the hinterlands for decent broadband with no copper involved. Been hearing about it for years, ain't seeing it yet. The areas of the nation that HAVE broadband and wireless got it now,overlapped and competetive, the rest-no one cares about it, and it's millions of people. We get copper pair dialup and that's it, so I don't see it going away like you do. The options are satellite based broadband, very expensive hardware, very expensive by the month with limited usefullness, or dialup.
Heard slashdot story rumors of 802 whatever blah blah blah and sky-fi and wi-fi and wimax and wi-turbo and blimp delivered and meshed with your peers and 2G and 2.5 g and 3G and G this and that and quantum teleportation implantable wearable supercomputer games and chat videophones and flying cars and such impressive market speak noise like that, but no real action except in a few places. Partly, I think anyway, because it's changing so fast, who really wants to invest in expensive gear and renting tower space or building towers and everything like that when two months later there's another "new shiny industry standard" and technique that "looks better"? The short term profits based VC loot is going to the same old top 100 or 200 major urban areas and short distance suburban leakage and that's about it. I mean, we have a cellphone and the local company loses our subscriber name every month. I have to literally go through and help them find out that yes in fact we have authorised service we signed up for a long time ago and here please take the money and they fail it. And this is an alleged "big player" verizon. I asked them about cell based data service,and get a blank stare at the customer service desk, they have *no clue*. I say "internet" and they don't get it. I've checked with T mobile and speakeasy and the others in the area, bottom line is if you can get basic talk on a plain vanilla cellphone you are lucky. You ain't getting any broadband, wired or wireless, no one is interested in it. And I am only an hour or so outside Atlanta, this isn't like it's some place in the middle of the amazon or anything.
So, just not seeing any "high tech" replacing plain old copper telephone wires all over real soon, not every place it ain't. But I'll keep reading the stories about it, same as I did the popular mechanics stories in the 50s.
Skype will come to Nintendo DS, 10,000,000 little kids will get it.
:P
Their parents will be forced to get it to maintain communications.
The telico's will fall and everything will be nice