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."

Comments

Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[Anonymous Coward]

Simplicity at its best!

Re:Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[JPriest]

Ausome, now I can dialup over VoIP if my broadband connection goes down!

Re:Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[qurk]

Theres no reason it shouldn't. A coworker of mine once tried exactly that, and it worked fine.

Re:Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[PierceLabs]

If your broadband connection is down how would you have access to any other services?

Re:Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[SunFan]

Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

I always found it ironic that, at one time, modems supposedly had a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 2400 baud or 9600 baud (can't remember exactly) over phone lines, but, here, my broadband connection is getting hundreds of Kb/s over that same phone line.

Re:Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[seanadams.com]

I always found it ironic that, at one time, modems supposedly had a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 2400 baud or 9600 baud (can't remember exactly) over phone lines, but, here, my broadband connection is getting hundreds of Kb/s over that same phone line.

Actually the "theoretical" limit was always 56K, because that's how many bps the DAC/ADC on the other end of your link would pass, period.

What changed with broadband was the equipment at the central office, and much of the equipment in between. You're siumply ignorant to imply that the modem inventors lacked foresight in predicting such a max throughput. That was, and still is absolutely the max throughput for POTS. Read up before you make an ass of yourself.

Re:Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[SunFan]

You're siumply ignorant to imply that the modem inventors lacked foresight in predicting such a max throughput.

Do a google search for "modem baud rate upper limit". Here's a gem: "the upper limit on asynchronous data transmission via voice-grade telephone lines appears to be 9600 bps. The use of higher transmission rates requires special dedicated lines that are "conditioned" (i.e., shielded from outside interference) as well as expensive modulation and transmission equipment." How about this: "The latest modem technologies push the upper limits of quality phone lines." Or this: "9600 bps is generally accepted as the upper limit on asynchronous data transmission via voice-grade telephone lines." Maybe this will suit you: "Modems running over analog lines have a theoretical upper limit of 33.6 Kbps for bi-directional data transfer." Perhaps this will finally put the issue to rest: "The maximum baud rate (signalling state transitions per second) on an analogue phone line is 2400. Bit rates higher than this must use increasingly complex modulation, phasing, coding and compression."

At many points in history, people really were pushing telephone state of the art. Have a nice day.

Re:Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[seanadams.com]

The maximum baud rate (signalling state transitions per second) on an analogue phone line is 2400. Bit rates higher than this must use increasingly complex modulation, phasing, coding and compression.

Right - so they knew that modems had room to improve! Thanks for reinforcing my point.

Re:Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[csirac]

33.6Kbps IS the maximum you can pump through analogue POTS. As the previous poster said, 56Kbps is an infrastructure limitation designed-in to traditional POTS hardware at the exchange.

It is NOT, as the previous poster suggested, due to the DACs - in fact, if you have a DAC between you and your ISP then the MOST you will be able to get is 33.6kbps, which is the FASTEST you can go on traditional POTS using analogue signalling methods (AFAIK).

Rather, 56kbps is an artifact of the designed-in 4kHz bandwidth allocation per voice channel. In order to get faster than 33.6, however, your data path between you and your ISP must be entirely digital. To go faster than 33.6, the modem goes "all digital" on the wire. And you can't do that if your line has an analoguedigital conversion in there somewhere, because you lose signal detail in the conversion process. You can't escape Shannon's law.

The quotes you have cited regarding 9600 as being an upper limit; if you have ever studied the topic, things start getting very complex very quickly beyond this when you only have a noisy, non-linear 4KHz of bandwidth. It requires DSP technology that just wasn't economical at the times these statements were made.

And finally, please look up the definition of baud:

"The maximum baud rate (signalling state transitions per second) on an analogue phone line is 2400"

For example, 9600 bits per second on POTS lines is implemented using a 2400 baud signalling scheme with four possible states per transition.

And to think I nearly failed comms :-)

Moral of the story: Don't use ignorance to pass judgment on others. Some very smart people, smarter than you and myself, knew exactly what they were doing in designing these standards.

Re:Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[jovetoo]

In order to get faster than 33.6, however, your data path between you and your ISP must be entirely digital. To go faster than 33.6, the modem goes "all digital" on the wire.

Actually, this is not correct, the modem still "goes analog". The problem with exceeding 33.6 kbps is an AD conversion, not DA conversion. Which is why those 56kbps modems only provide 33.6 kbps upstream. The DA conversion in the downstream part of your line is not subject to Shannon's law.

Your analog line must be terminated at a digital exchange which must have a purely digital link to your ISP however.

Re:Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line

[tricorn]

Analog doesn't have ANY inherent bandwidth limitations. It all depends on the noise/power levels. Normal POTS has filters on the line which does limit the bandwidth. However, going digital in the switch doesn't change that.

Since the sampling rate is at 56Kbps (over a 64Kbps channel, but some is reserved for signaling), the max theoretical you can pump through it is 56Kbps - however, due to the filtering done on the line before the ADC (because it is designed for converting voice), you can't actually get that much on the uplink. For a 56Kbps downlink connection it has to stay digital until the DAC that heads towards you as an analog signal (and then, you only get the 56Kbps rate if the analog line is clean). At one point, the data rate in the US was limited to 53Kbps because of FCC limits on transmitted power over the phone line - there was a proposal to raise that limit, permitting the full 56Kbps, but I don't know if that ever happened.

Re:Progress

[Will_Malverson]

There was progress made in the availability but not a lot made in sound quality. My friend has a VOIP phone and when he calls my landline it sounds like he's calling from the bottom of a bucket. Keeps dropping out too.

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.

Mirror

[FinchWorld]

Just incase... ...Here

Re:Progress

[Morlark]

But VOIP can be used for really useful things too. One of my mates has set things up so that when you call his house you can press a button to connect to a specific extension, without the need for installing a half dozen phones in his house. He's rather ambitiously considering the possibility of connecting it to a Teamspeak server, just for pure silliness value. VOIP is very useful, IMHO.

Re:Hot Jewish Girls!

[FinchWorld]

eew man shoulders!

If only I'd bothered to create an account earlier, I might have been able to use mod point on this.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Speakfreely had a gsm mode at 16kbps and sounded as good as your microphone was. You don't need 128kbps (that's overkill for voice) you just need a decent codec and about 16-24 kbps (mono).

But it's all about the money and the more channels you can cram on the bandwidth, more profit for them.

Personal Experience:

[grasshoppa]

Well, while it may not mean much in a grand scheme of things, I can tell you that I have plans of setting up 3 offices with a VoIP system, due mainly to the cost of the competitors.

I will be using asterisk on linux. While not as feature rich as some of the other companies' offerings, it does have the benefit of being cheaper.

By an order of magnatude.

So, my prediction is this: If voice companies try to treat this as another cash cow, OSS alternatives ( like asterisk ) will boom, in both features and use.

Re:Personal Experience:

[Afrosheen]

We've just completed a VOIP project for a small business, and so far it's wonderful.

We were originally quoted around 25k for a Cisco system using all of their hardware (call manager, media server, 18 7960 phones, licenses, routers, etc.). We laughed at the quote and a local guy told us he could do it for half of that. We still laughed.

We purchased a decent 3u case and built a server with an athlon xp3200 chip, a gig of ram, nice motherboard and a few Digium tdm400 cards for our pstn outgoing lines (only 6).

Including my consulting fee and hardware costs for 18 very nice Polycom phones, we barely scratched 8k. There is no arguing with the cost/value ratio of a solution like linux + asterisk. We were pretty careless when we built the system, budget-wise, but were surprised when we totaled it all up. Needless to say the CEO was thrilled to find that we gave him a more flexible solution with zero vendor lock-in for a fraction of the projected cost. If we were to roll this same system again now with what we've learned we could do it faster and a little cheaper. AMP has been a big helper in getting things working quickly and is a nice part of our system we can readily show off.

I honestly believe 2005 will be a great year for VOIP, particularly for hardware providers.

Re:Personal Experience:

[conantroutman]

Asterisk might be fine for small companies who have in-house Linux knowledge (and time). But in reality it's a long way from being a viable call center solution (feature & client wise). People just want to plug it in a have it go, people want to be able to manipulate calls and messages from Outlook and Lotus, it's about having an soultion which integrates with existing technology. Check out IPFX http://www.ipfx.com/ it does all of this and more. OSS solutions will only boom if they match this level of sophistication.

Re:Personal Experience:

[csirac]

Yep,

Our shop split into two buildings - the old one (sales) and another round the corner across a highway (service).

Using a wireless link (w/IPSec for security on top of WPA, since we have some "intranet" app thingies too), two Debian GNU/Linux boxes with a Digium TDM400 card in each one, we can now:
1) Make internal calls for free as much as we like
2) Dial out using a collective line pool of 7 PSTN lines between both shops
3) Transfer calls from one shop to the other
4) Answer with voicemail after hours
5) Music on hold!
6) Watch caller ID to decide if we want to answer the call (or perhaps transfer them to the MOH test extension, BWHAHA)
7) Use Areski CDR searchable call history/stats database. In fact, my boss(es) have been so completely impressed with this one app it would be very hard for them to do without. We can track: who has rang, who we've rang, when, from which phone, on which line, for how long. The stats we've gathered have been phenominal - hours spent on the phone per day - we never would have imagined. We can also now say which is the busiest day of the week for calls.

All this for the cost of our original commander system which was 8 phones.

We use a mix of Budge-Tone 100s and Snom 190s. If someone could point me in the right direction to make distinctive ring on the Snom190 work, that'd really make my day :-)

Re:Personal Experience:

[conantroutman]

VOIP for the masses must integrate with these mediums irrespective of your opinion of them. The idea is to have no MSCE (duh).

One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[ShatteredDream]

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.

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[lordkuri]

How does CALEA factor in when the connection doesn't touch the POTS system though?

Seriously, if they can require *any* VOIP to be tappable, where does it stop? Email? web traffic? IM?

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[Anonymous Coward]

They should be able to just update Echelon to do this, no legislative crap required.

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[Bill_Royle]

"It'll either put open source developers using encryption at odds with federal policy or require that we all expose ourselves online."

You all can make your own decisions, but if VoIP regulations require that Slashdotters expose themselves, I'll just stick with POTS.

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[dustinbarbour]

There is a difference between the military man and the politicians who command the military. The military man has a greater sense of duty whilst the politicians tend to be power-hungry. No evidence to offer, but it seems to be the way of things.

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[Wesley Felter]

How does CALEA factor in when the connection doesn't touch the POTS system though?

It doesn't.

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[lordkuri]

so if I call another Vonage customer, then CALEA doesn't factor in and they can't tap my call? I think that's incorrect. I could have sworn that they insisted that Vonage provide that capability for all of their customers.

so again, why am I subject to CALEA when it's an IP-only call?

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[IHateSlashDot]

All major voip media servers already support what you call "wire tapping". I'm not talking about the dinky little gateways or phones that a typical /. would have. Those don't matter and never will. But for mass market voip you're concerns are already a reality. Deal with it.

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

no, they meant that you can't legally be tapped under CALEA if you dial an IP...but if you dial a PSTN number, you're now under CALEA's jurisdiction.

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[taniwha]

I think you're wrong (and a tad rude) - it does matter, a lot - in fact I'd be suprised if people like Al Quaeda don't already have their own (encrypted) PBXs ... and almost certainly not located in the US ... mind you I don't particularly want the US govt bugging my (dinky little /. gateway) PBX - also not located in the US.

The sad thing about this is that the 'bad guys' are smart enough to avoid the stuff the US can go after but they do anyway like a bull in a china shop with no finesse and the result is that the rest of us lose our freedoms

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[Afrosheen]

Throw an ipsec/ssh/vpn tunnel on each endpoint and good luck cracking calls. See, VOIP udp packets don't stick around for very long, it's a stream. Try cracking a short stream of packets for a call like 'Drop the drugs at the harbor *CLICK*' or 'Bring the apple pie to your grandma's house today'. If all of the traffic going in and coming out from a network is encrypted, when will you know when to start listening and where to start looking for VOIP packets? Ports can be redirected to look like web traffic or dns queries..

Basically, it's not as easy as wire tapping. Hell, I can tap your phone line standing outside your house or apartment and holding an inductive amplifier to the line. It's ridiculously easy. VOIP tapping, on the other hand, is another can of worms.

Re:One prediction that I hope doesn't come true

[jaoswald]

Al Qaeda are often clever and resourceful, but they aren't necessarily uber-elite hackers.

After all, for quite some time they thought they could maintain communication security by repeatedly exchanging cell phones. However, they got caught up by the fact that the SIM module, which they transferred from phone-to-phone was the actual identifiable piece of hardware.

Also, their ideas on such things as dirty bombs showed a lack of expert knowledge.

That said, you don't have to be a super-elite hacker with ultra-super encryption to not get caught, which is good enough for them, and bad news for the rest of civilization.

Re:Progress

[jrcamp]

Why? As I recall, MP3, ogg vorbis, and the like aren't meant for compressing voice data. They're much better at dealing with music.

There are codecs specifically meant for speech, such as http://www.speex.org/.

Re:Progress

[Albanach]

That sounds like a microphone / soundcard / bandwidth or latency problem.

Almsot everyone I call ahs remarked on the quality of the call, not the lack. You don't provide any info but your friend really wants to try locally recording his/her voice to see if the quality there is good. If it's not get a USB headset. If the quality is good they need to look at their net connection and software.

Re:Hot Jewish Girls!

[klipsch_gmx]

If only I'd bothered to create an account earlier, I might have been able to use mod point on this.

Instead, you'll have to wait and boost your karma through mirrordot karma-whoring. Oh well.

I'm happy...

[SuperDuG]

I use Vonage here at home. The $15 plan seems to be more than enough (seeing as I'm obviously not popular enough to justify the unlimited plan). Granted the quality can be rather harsh sometimes, but thats because I'm using most of my bandwidth for something else.

If you give vonage 128kpbs both directions it will be the quality of a cell phone. Not absolutely perfect, but well within the range of acceptable. I've spent hours at a time on the phone with vonage and let me tell you, its leaps and bounds above the good old days of dialpad.com.

So will VoIP be a big player in `05, you bet your ass it will. Considering mainly that landline telephones cost so much more and offer very little justification for it. With VoIP and cell phones, I predict a death for standard copper land lines by at least 2015.

Re:I'm happy...

[JPriest]

Vonage offers 30, 50, and 90Kbits/sec. I use the 50 Kbps setting and I don't notice much difference over my land line. I have to say that I am also pretty happy with their service. My phone bill was $58/mo with no long distance, I save $43/mo with vonage, that alone covers the cost of my cable modem.

Re:I'm happy...

[hughk]

Interestingly enough, the voice codecs for GSM run at about 13Kbps. The quality, given the need for error reovery isn't bad.

We can easily stick music down 64 Kbps, so what are they doing with 128Kpbs?

Turnkey opportunity

[timothy]

Having seen smart people struggle to get Asterisk working (cool a system as it is!), I imagine there would be quite a brisk market for a pre-configured, low-power box running asterisk ready for the user to plug in some custom messages, and / or rely on existing generic ones. That is, something truly plug-and-play, providing your have at least one POTS line to which it can be connected.

Such a system needn't be *cheap* exactly in order to be quite a bit less expensive than typical PBXes, which are usually overkill for small businesses, as well as for any but the most elaborate homes. (Should be doable for a few hundred dollars, I'd guess.)

Or am I just missing that someone is selling such a beast already?

Re:Turnkey opportunity

[JPriest]

Perhaps not exactly the pre-packages solution you are looking for, but you may want to check out Asterisk Management Portal, the OSS non commercial version of Voxbox (with screenshots) and Flash Operator Panel, it runs on AMP and gives a realtime look at call activity through the PBX.

I believe Voxbox, from a software point, does pretty much what you are looking for, now if you can just find someone to package it with small hardware platform for a decent price...

Re:Turnkey opportunity

[JPriest]

PS. You may also want to check out the demo of Voxbox. It offers point and click ability to do things like add extentions, call groups, voice menus, hold music etc.

Bad for Network Traffic

[dotslashdot]

9-1-1 dilemma--what if there is an emergency & someone needs to use VOIP to call for help? Are we going to create "emergency" packets with sirens so all of the other packets will pull over? Does this mean that network traffic will get worse because all the packets will be on the phone? This sounds like a phony answer to a question packet with problems.

Re:Bad for Network Traffic

[Trigulus]

Actually Cisco is updating their IOS to give voice packets priority. This is probably an optional thing but from the way our ISP was talking its going to be implemented everywhere even on the big backbone routers.

Re:Bad for Network Traffic

[flithm]

Why wouldn't you just make a regular VoIP call to 911? Why would an emergency call need to have its packets classified any differently than any other phone call?

Here in Canada Primus is already offering VoIP service with 911 available in all areas.

Also, the VoIP hardware devices themselves perform QoS a both ends to ensure that the rest of your network traffic doesn't get in the way. Yes IPv6 has the ability to allow different priority of packets, as well as different modes such as isochronous (which will be useful for media streaming). But seriously, it's not really needed. As long as the hardware does QoS, the packets will just get routed along the way, and as long as your (and the servers) connections are fast enough... 911 is certainly no dillemma with VoIP.

Re:Bad for Network Traffic

[ldspartan]

...

This has already been around for years, as Quality of Service bits in IP headers. Routers and particularly switches have supported various actions based on the values of these bits for a long time.

What might be changing is that QoS doesn't exist (well, it's ignored) at the ISP level and on the internet at large. Perhaps your ISP is just turning it on.

Love to jump for joy, but....

[mjh49746]

....if I can't even get broadband in my neck of the woods and have to contend with dial-up + an expensive bill from Verizon every month, I simply can't be thrilled about VoIP if I can't even get it. Typical, us rural folk getting left out again.

Maybe I might wireless broadband this year? Not likely since I'm not line-of-sight with the _only_ wireless broadband tower and that's only 8 miles away from me.

/me jealous of the world, and plotting my revenge.

Re:Love to jump for joy, but....

[hassasin]

You could always get sattelite broadband, if you've got the money http://www.direcway.com/

Re:Love to jump for joy, but....

[fuzzy12345]

Typical, us rural folk getting left out again.

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.

Re:Love to jump for joy, but....

[lordkuri]

while sattelite is a so-so choice for rural broadband, it's virtually unuseable for VOIP due to a minimum of ~500ms of latency. Most of the commercial providers *do* have some type of latency compensation in their software, but I'm almost certain that they aren't designed to compensate for that much of a delay.

Re:Love to jump for joy, but....

[mjh49746]

I choose to live in the country so I don't have to worry so much about getting mugged or shot over a few bucks or something trivial. If I have to deal with that bullshit just to get broadband, then I'd rather sit on my crappy dial-up and bitch instead, thank you. At least I can breathe out here without gagging from the dirty city air.

Re:Love to jump for joy, but....

[mjh49746]

Sattelite broadband? I wouldn't even bother from all the horror stories I've heard from other subscriber's experiences. That and for $99 per month from DirectWay, for example, if I do anything more than basic surfing, I'll get throttled back to dialup speeds? F8ck that! It's just not worth the risk for me. With the lag from sattelite, forget online gaming and VoIP. Hell, dial-up's a better deal than that!

Re:Love to jump for joy, but....

[fuzzy12345]

I choose to live in the country so I don't have to worry so much about getting mugged or shot over a few bucks or something trivial.

If that's your worry, crime statistics are available, as is Prozac.

I live in a city of four million, and a homicide rate 1/30 that of Washington, D.C.

But, as the morons say, "an armed society is a polite society."

I'd rather sit on my crappy dial-up and bitch.

Duly noted.

Re:Love to jump for joy, but....

[NardofDoom]

When you have the government limiting the ability for communities to provide broadband to support companies I don't think complaining to them would help.

And it's not just people in rural areas. I can't get anything over three megs and I live less than 5 miles from my state capitol.

This is also the year...

[DragonPup]

...that cable companies are getting into the act. Here in New England, Comcast has been testing VOIP in selected areas of Massachusetts since last year. The plan is to start launching the product this year. This will be an interesting year for VOIP, what with more competition entering the fray.

Re:This is also the year...

[timeOday]

Please, not Comcast. The whole point of this would be to roll my (expensive) telephone service into my (also expensive) Comcast Internet bill. I'm sure Comcast would be happy to charge me for both, but it's hard for me to imagine "Comcast" and "cost savings" in the same sentence. Competing in this market would just give Comcast a strong incentive to block VOIP not offered by them; after all, if you can receive incoming calls it must be a "server" of some sort and therefore a violoation to the TOS.

Re:This is also the year...

[baratunde]

speaking of comcast, anyone read the WSJ article (reg req) this morning? Highlights: - caller ID which whispers calling party ino - $39.95 all you can eat usage - possible integrated phone which is wireless outside home and cordless landline inside Anyone know more?

all three

[SmoothDime]

can't wait until phone, internet and tv are all delivered on the same line(or signal). imagine the hybrid apps that will come with that.

Re:all three

[ikea5]

sounds just like my cable tv + broadband+ voip.

Re:all three

[spectre_240sx]

What's wrong with targetted ads? As long as they don't come with any more frequency anyway. I personally like the idea as I might find out about something I'm actually interested in rather than watching yet another commercial with some ripped jackass selling workout videos. Now, if it entails having some sort of monitoring system on my computer or another type of privacy invasion, no, I don't like the idea. If it's through the type of television I've been watching, I can deal with that.

My company recommending remote emp switch to VoIP

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

My consulting group works out of our home offices and we have our broadband/business line paid for by corp. Previously for long distance we were issued MCI phone cards which added up to quite a bill since most of our clients are all over North America. I was the first in the group to switch to Vonage and after seeing the potential savings VoIP has become standard practice in our group.

There have been some embarrassing moments with dropped calls in the middle of a conference call, but they have been few and far between. My only gripe with Vonage is the lousy router I was issued (Motorola VT1005V) which can crash if it is connected to a hub/switch with too many connections. Solved the problem by getting a good main router (Netopia R9100) and putting the Vonage router behind that with port forwarding.

Re:Progress

[wfberg]

Why? As I recall, MP3, ogg vorbis, and the like aren't meant for compressing voice data. They're much better at dealing with music.

There are codecs specifically meant for speech, such as http://www.speex.org/.

Speex specializes in low bandwidth voice.

If you have 128kbps to throw around, speex is overkill. MP3 may have been designed to compress music especially well, but it's held up quite well as an all-round codec. (Though there might not be much masking noises - like loud beats that obscure other sounds - in speech, the spectral range is quite limited, and MP3 picks up on that.)

And who says VOIP is for voice only? It's not uncommon for me to want to let a friend hear some music that's playing on mtv or my computer. With speech-optimized codecs, it comes out crap on the other end. Even on-hold music sounds mostly like silence and some blips on a cellphone. In fact, I've contemplated using the GSM codec to identify the speech part of music, so I can use it to produce "karaoke"/instrumental versions of music..

I wonder if there's a software upgrade that enables telephone companies to use 64/56kbps ogg (though obviously mono) codecs instead of G.711/G.723.

Vonage prices have been dropping...

[PornMaster]

I signed up with Vonage a bit under a year ago. When I did, it was $34.99/mo for unlimited US&Can calling. Twice since then, they've dropped it $5/mo. I don't know if it's a matter of their costs dropping with economies of scale or to compete with the cable companies rolling out their own, but I must say that I love the reduction in cost without any reduction in wonderful service.

Re:Vonage prices have been dropping...

[SunFan]

I don't know if it's a matter of their costs dropping with economies of scale or to compete with the cable companies rolling out their own...

With cable companies beginning to offer voice, and with phone companies supposedly starting to offer TV service, the next few years of pricing will be very interesting. DSL proved that the phone company's lines are still useful, so it's basically a case of one entrenched infrastructure battling it out with another entrenched infrastructure. We will probably win either way (features vs. cost), so I'll just sit back and watch.

Re:Vonage prices have been dropping...

[SunFan]

Oh, and I forgot to mention the power companies. That's a third entrenched infrastructure that could plausibly cary IP and VoIP and TV-o-IP. Add a national wireless carrier--cell towers--and that could be even a fourth competitor. Stock analyists will probably go grey trying to forecast the winner.

Re:Vonage prices have been dropping...

[Thing 1]

At the risk of infecting others with my pipe dreams, I would venture to say that the cost will drop to basically $0 within 20 years.

Yes, nanotechnology is one of the buzzwords in my head, but it's not the end-all-be-all (hi Cameron!) of human existence--that's reserved for once we've achieved nanotech, then we can start playing around in the quantum arena. That oughta be exciting!

But whether it's from increased advertising or just the pitifully low cost of sunlight, most goods and services will approach $0 in the next generation. And most of us will live to see it (and then, to see the sun explode).

Again, I'm incautiously optimistic. ;-)

Predictions

[Animats]

• Spam moves to VoIP Press 1 for a Rolex, 2 for Vioxx...
• Homeland Security and the FBI get involved. We'll hear from the wiretapping people again.
• The cable guys try to take over. Talk for an hour, get a free movie.
• VoIP over 3G Technically stupid, but likely.
• Power over Ethernet meets VoIP Phones stay up, until the UPS dies.
• Ringtones for VoIP phones Music for the office.
• First VoIP viruses Coming soon to a phone near you.

Re:Predictions

[igjeff]

>VoIP over 3G Technically stupid, but likely.

Only in the implementations that you have specifically mentioned. The general idea is not technically stupid.

The idea being, make "cell phones" just do data transfer...likely even IP specifically. And then voice calls are carried as VoIP calls over that data connection.

There are already moves in some areas in this direction in technology. The local jurisdiction of police in my area is rolling out a new radio system do to the city/county merger and the merging of the police required a new radio system. The radio system is technically a pure data system. Voice "radio" communications on this system are carried as H.323 calls over the data connection that the radios provide. There are all kinds of benefits for this, which will be left as an exercise for the reader...but there's no good reason that commercial wireless providers couldn't move in the same direction...the technologies are basically the same, just the commercial providers would have to scale it up much larger than a police force would.

Jeff

Re:Predictions

[Laebshade]

Power over Ethernet meets VoIP Phones stay up, until the UPS dies.

Stop there a second. It's been done.

• All models offer straightforward user customization capabilities to meet changing needs
• Cisco IP Phones 7971G-GE and 7970G support IEEE 802.3af PoE
• Cisco IP Phones 7970G, 7960G, 7940G, 7910G, 7910G + SW, 7912G, 7905G and 7902G can accept Cisco pre-standard Power over Ethernet (PoE) from a card integrated with a Catalyst switch or a Catalyst in-line power patch panel
• Cisco IP Phone 7971G-GE includes two 10/100/1000BaseT switch interfaces to ensure quality of service (QoS)
• Cisco IP Phones 7970G, 7960G, 7940G, 7910G + SW, and 7912G include two-port 10/100BaseT switch interfaces to ensure quality of service (QoS)
• Cisco Wireless IP Phone 7920 delivers up to six extensions, wireline voice quality, small form factor, standard and extended Li-ion battery options, menu driven graphical user interface, and inter-campus secure-seamless roaming
• Cisco IP Phone 7902G, is a cost-effective, single-line, entry-level IP phone addressing the voice communications needs of a lobby, laboratory, manufacturing floor, or hallway--or other areas where only basic calling capability is required

We have the Cisco IP Phones 7940 series here at work. They're supposed to stay up a while from our UPS (but they don't, UPS might be faulty). Last time our power went out we were able to use our phones for 15 minutes.

Re:Predictions

[Big_Al_B]

Not to be a spoiler, but:

• Homeland Security and the FBI get involved. We'll hear from the wiretapping people again.

CALEA has been a consideration for VoIP service providers (like the one I work for) for several years already.

• Power over Ethernet meets VoIP Phones stay up, until the UPS dies.
• Ringtones for VoIP phones Music for the office.

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.

Re:Predictions

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Power over Ethernet meets VoIP Phones stay up, until the UPS dies.

Not a bad idea, but PoE is somewhat more expensive. $12-15 just for a passive system, $40 for an active true-PoE system.

The phone line output should already power remote phones, just stick the VoIP box where the UPS is and tap into the house's phone cabling from there. A bigger question to me will be what happens when the internet goes down.

Re:Predictions

[Big_Al_B]

With respect, I think you're confusing several things here.

First, I think you're talking about plugging traditional analog phones into a single VoIP integrated access device (IAD), but I believe the original poster was referring to actual VoIP phones. VoIP phones have Ethernet interfaces and don't have FXO jacks, so they can't receive power from "the phone line". VoIP phones either get their power from PoE or from a wall plug transformer.

Second, I may be misunderstanding, "The phone line output should already power remote phones," but keep in mind the power on the phone line comes from the phone company that provides your POTS service. If you disconnect POTS service in favor of VoIP, then the phone company will no longer put power on the line. That said, VoIP IADs have FXS jacks that will power POTS phones.

A bigger question to me will be what happens when the internet goes down.

The answer to that can be simple or nuanced depending on how you set up your phone services.

In the simplest setup where you rely on your VoIP provider to signal and route all your calls, you will not have working phones.

If your IAD can do local extension call signalling and routing, then your internal calls will still work, but not any VoIP calls to locations outside your LAN.

If your IAD has an FXO port, and you retain POTS service from your telco, then you may plug your IADs FXO port into your POTS service. Then you could route external calls to your telco until your internet connection is fixed. Your IAD must be highly configurable in order to handle this though.

Taxes will kill this (in the US anyway)

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

The Car The Phone The VoIP-Router/Repeater

[jeanicinq]

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 predict.....

[JPriest]

2005 will be the year that people understand you don't need 802.11 to use a cordless phone with VoIP. With most VoIP adapters is a standard RJ-11 connector, just get a normal multi-handset cordless phone.

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.

now all we need are

[Festering Leper]

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?

Re:now all we need are

[Anonymous Coward]

We do have VOIP phones like that - your exisiting phone. Just plug your VOIP phone adapter into your modem and then into a phone jack. Disconnect your phone companies line into your internal wiring and you have VOIP in every phone jack in your house with all of your existing phones.

Is wiring infrastructure sufficient

[GaryOlson]

VOIP requires more than software, servers, and VOIP phones. The physical wiring must be sufficient to support the eventual bandwidth requirements.

For example, the network in one building (government contract on low bid) split the CAT5 pairs: 2 pair to each wall port. (Y'all can argue the technical feasability of using 2 pair instead of 4; but,) In order to implement VOIP in that building, new CAT5e wire must be run to each office. This is a cost which the administration is having a hard time understanding when the building is only 10 years old. (No, we are not going to just re-unite the pairs and put a cheap unmanaged switch in every office.)

re:..I'm happy... well, I'm not

[zogger]

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.

How CALEA could be a factor

[ShatteredDream]

A simple process called a legislative amendment. All it would take would be for some government-lovin member of Congress to attach a rider to a piece of legislation such as an appropriations bill and all of a sudden, VoIP is covered under CALEA. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch either. They'd just call it "bring CALEA into the 21st century" and most people would just give two thumbs up and not care.

Btw, with a court order, all of those protocols you listed can be intercepted.

Skype is merely "quite good"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Skype's technology is quite good"

Talk about damning with faint praise!

Skype isn't merely quite good: it's a global sensation whose success is outstripping every other VOIP program available. And it deserves every bit of it. Superb qualitity, clean interface, cross platform and simple for Joe Average to set up and be using it in seconds. And totally free for computer to computer users. This is the kind of innovation that makes a laughing stock of Microsoft AND Apple. Even their excellent iChat isn't cross platform - and should be.

Jumped on the bandwagon a few days ago...

[Beetle B.]

I signed up for Broadvox Direct's unlimited plan - $20/mo to the US & Canada.

Got it all set up a few days ago. Quality is great. Apparently there was an outage (not sure how long, perhaps under an hour) on New Year's Eve, but I wasn't even home when it happened.

I can't really say I'm saving much money, as my land line is only about $15, and if I include long distance calls using my calling card, the total is probably still under $20. But with all the added features I get - some of which aren't available on regular lines - I've got no complaints.

Am I happy? You bet!

Re:Predictions - VoIP over 3G

[PureCreditor]

this actually is not "stupid."

cell phone companies nearly never have unlimited weekday daytime plans during business hours, so a business call to Canada for 2 hours would be TAD expensive.

with 3G data plans being unlimited data at USD 80 / month, a corporate America company can simply give a traveling businessman a 3G data card, sign him up with the $80 plan, and make calls to Canada and heaven forbid, India, for as long as he wants.

Legal in South Africa - at last

[nicc777]

As of early 2005 VoIP will be legal in South Africa. There are a lot of refences at google. Now, if only we can get broad band Internet at affordable rates...

Re:Progress

[SunFan]

They're much better at dealing with music.

What if I sing?

Re:Personally, my prediction is only for me

[Johnie B]

Sounds good.. That's what I want Cell Phone to VOIP. Cell Phones are way too much money in the USA (pay for incoming outgoing calls, expensive plans, plus minutes, but hey, at least no fcc line charge) Jeremy razorit26@yahoo.com

Skype will come to Gameboy DS

[Deliveranc3]

Skype will come to Nintendo DS, 10,000,000 little kids will get it.

Their parents will be forced to get it to maintain communications.

The telico's will fall and everything will be nice :P

There is no QoS on the Internet...

[msauve]

except in some small isolated segments. There likely never will be (in a general sense) with current methods, as it would entail trusting end users to mark their own packets. If you can do that, is anyone who knows how to do so _NOT_ going to mark all of their own stuff for high priority? QoS works in private networks. On the Internet, you take your chances, just like everyone else. The real issue with E911 is location services. If you can place a call from a laptop, which can be moved anywhere, then a means of identifying physical/geographical location and then using that info to route 911 calls to the proper local authorities along with that location information is needed.