Is VoIP Google's Next Frontier?

WindBourne writes "Apparently, Google is looking to some degree at VoIP. Of course, the question is whether they will support such items as Asterisk and FreeWorld or will they simply buy another company and tinker from that end."

Comments

Quality?

[Sierpinski]

A friend of mine has a VoIP service, and I think its horrible. He cuts in and out all the time, low volume (even though he says he's almost shouting) and there's constant static. I don't know who his carrier is, but if thats any indication of the general quality of VoIP, then I'll stick with my landline and cell phone.

Anyone else have good or bad experience with VoIP quality?

Re:Quality?

[booyah]

Using an Avaya VOIP system at my office and remote sites (over vpn) i have to say its good to great quality. cant tell that the user is on an IP or a normal digital set.

having my parents and a sister on Vonage, I would say its at least as good as my cell.

I would give a comparison compared to a land line but i never use one. sorry.

Re:Quality?

[dsginter]

Anyone else have good or bad experience with VoIP quality?

It is all in the codec (and configuration thereof) that your provider uses. Most of the cheapie services will optimize for bandwidth rather than quality for the sake of saving money but Vonage does the opposite, in my experience. Their quality is better than that of a traditional landline.

The thing is, you can get CD-quality out of VoIP if conditions allow (and they eventually will). So don't let this FUD up your view of the technology.

Re:Quality?

[andy1307]

I have some issues with my internet service(Adelphia), not with my VoIP provider(Vonage). There's a two second delay before the conversation starts but other than that, I am generally happy with my service. I have the 15$/month plan and I never run out of minutes. I use a cell phone for long distance calls. You can set it up so that if your internet connection is down, the calls to your VoIP line get forwarded to your cell phone(or office phone if you prefer). I had a problem using a VPN connection when I had the VoIP box in front of my linksys router. You can open up the right port to fix that but i've been too lazy. I have the VoIP box behind the linksys router and it works fine.

I DO have a problem with using multiple lines. You have to plug in your phones to the VoIP box. You can fix that by cutting off the power supply coming from your LEC line.

Re:Quality?

[vvhitekid2]

Some voip isn't really for everybody yet. The people who are going to see the best results, and will consequently love it, are not the same people who are gonna stick it on their wide-open 802.11b router and call it good, all while maxing out their bandwidth with P2P stuff.

You will generally* get the most out of it if you know a little bit about firewalls, networking, and traffic shaping. After some tweaking with my Avaya set-up and my FreeBSD firewall I now have just about perfect quality.

* The commercial voip providers I've been looking at are now offering the hardware to handle the traffic shaping, etc.

Re:Quality?

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

I use Vonage for my home office and the experience has been positive enough that the rest of my consulting group is converting to save on calling card costs. A couple of things to consider.

* Latency - If you're an online gamer and can consistently find several servers with low ping, then you should be good for VoIP. I dumped cable broadband due to the network latency going to hell in the late afternoon when all the kids returned home from school. With DSL this has never been a problem.

* Get a good router or build your own router - The original Vonage router (Motorola) is supposed to be in front of your home network router/switch, but I was finding it would crash frequently under heavy traffic. Tried putting the Vonage router behind a cheap home Linksys (later Netgear) router and still had to perform daily resets. Finally purchased a used Netopia R9100 and it's been excellent.

You can also try building your own router using one of the Linux router distros. They have bandwidth shaping utilities that can prevent connected clients from sucking all the bandwidth. Great if your kids like to run P2P.

Re:Quality?

[johnjaydk]

It is all in the codec (and configuration thereof) that your provider uses.

Are you for real ?

The codec determines the bandwith/voice quality tradeoff that's true but thats less than half the issue. The real deal is quality-of-service (QoS) in layer 2 (ethernet/atm etc) and layer 3 (IP). When you have QoS in hand and a reasonable bandwith ALL-THE-WAY through then you've got a real VoIP system.

I happen to do this stuff for a living and QoS is rather hard. In particular when you don't have much control over your customers (crappy) networks.

Re:Quality?

[grasshoppa]

Using an Avaya VOIP system at my office and remote sites (over vpn) i have to say its good to great quality. cant tell that the user is on an IP or a normal digital set.

Side note, off topic: Avaya RAPES people when they want to go VoIP. I got a quote for ~100g for my office setup which prompted me to go with asterisk. At the end of the day, it was 15g, with redudant servers with good hardware. If a server dies, the voip services can be transfered in a few minutes. I'm working right now to learn how to switch them transparently.

Re:Quality?

[swillden]

The real deal is quality-of-service (QoS) in layer 2 (ethernet/atm etc) and layer 3 (IP). When you have QoS in hand and a reasonable bandwith ALL-THE-WAY through then you've got a real VoIP system.

Both the codec and the connection are important. The codec and the bit rate determine define the upper limit on the audio quality. If the codec can't reproduce the audio accurately at the specified bit rate, your call is going to sound lousy even if every packet arrives instantaneously.

On the other hand, if your connection is lousy, either can't deliver the bandwidth required, has high (or highly variable) latency or frequently drops packets, you're going to have other problems.

I use Vonage on a Comcast cable modem, and the quality is generally excellent, unless I'm overloading my cable connection. I use a Linux router configured to do traffic shaping/policing and to give precedence to the VOIP traffic and that *mostly* works, but people I speak with report the occasional garble or dropout when I'm transferring large files.

My boss uses Vonage on a fairly low-bandwidth DSL connection and doesn't have a smart router to prioritize VOIP traffic, although he does put the Motorola VOIP box in front of his Linksys router/WAP, so the Motorola box should be able to do prioritization. In his case, his VOIP service gets really bad when he's sending large e-mails.

Assuming the connection is good, my experience with Vonage is that Vonage-to-land-line calls are excellent and Vonage-to-Vonage calls are astoundingly good. I don't know if I'd say "CD quality", but the audio is far clearer and louder than any phone connection I've used.

I do notice some latency, but I think that's only because I'm paying attention. After scrutinizing my VOIP connections for months, I now notice *massive* latency on my cellphone communications. My cell phone has almost twice the latency of my VOIP phone, but I never noticed it before I got VOIP and started obsessing over it.

BTW, it's fun to call my cell phone from my VOIP phone and hold them next to each other and listen to the "feedback". The large total latency (Almost 250ms, I'd guess) leads to some really interesting "echoey" feedback effects.

Another Day...

[Colourspace]

Another story about what Google *might* be looking to do... Anything else new going on in the world of tech?

Re:Another Day...

[Cyberax]

Maybe we should start stories about what Google might NOT be looking to do?

Re:Another Day...

[memoriesofgreen]

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2005/03/google_guns.htm lHere one, for example

And for my next trick...

[DisprinDirect]

I'm feeling lucky, connect me to a random phone number...

Another Google rumour?

[CleverNickedName]

Any sign that they may be developing Duke Nuke 'em Forever?

AOL is getting into the VoIP market too

[andy1307]

AOL: You've got VoIP

How about improving...

[should_be_linear]

Googe Search engine? Here in Czech Rep. user base of Google dropped to 10-20% because local engine jyxo.cz wipes floor with google. And they will expand to other (so far central) european countries too.

Re:How about improving...

[gclef]

You sure? I think it's just that google has too many vowels for your standard Czech to feel comfortable with.

Hype?

[offensiveweapon]

Don't get me wrong, I love Google. I think they're a great company that clearly has a lot of success ahead of them. However, it just seems like there's a lot of hype and speculation about them just because they're Google. There's all this buzz everytime Google seems to be moving in a new direction. But isn't it possible they're just doing what any up and coming company would do by exploring their options for growth and diversification into new areas? Put it this way: company X could be doing the same thing, but there are no news stories about them...

Slashdot

[imipak]

Perhaps Google are trying to corner the market in pointless "Maybe Company X is going to launch Product Y!" speculation stories on Slashdot. Tough market, if so.

Slashdot should change its slogan

[mshiltonj]

"Slashdot: News for nerds about Google. Stuff that matters about Google. Rumors about what Google might do next. Google, Google. Google."

VOIP is as the future... just like dial-up

[Total_Wimp]

I use my cell phone for everything. I get "free" use of long distance all the time and "free" minutes on nights and weekends which means I can stay on the phone for hours without needing to tie up my network connection.

People who operate like me are growing and land-line use is shrinking. We don't care about long distance charges. VOIP is a niche and will always be a niche and Google suddenly "getting into it" will mean nothing more than a modest new revenue stream until VOIP moves from mostly irrelevant to totally irrelevant.

Sorry, I just calls 'em as I sees 'em.

TW

Re:VOIP is as the future... just like dial-up

[Skye16]

Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean, why would anyone pay 25$ for unlimited useage at any time in the US and Canada when they can pay 60$ a month for 500 or 600 minutes daytime and free nights and weekends?

I use my cell phone for emergencies or when I'm in the car; smallest plan I can get. When i'm out doing something, I'm out doing something, not talking on the #%*!ing phone. And I'll be damned if I wait until 9pm just to hold a relatively decent conversation with someone.

I know there are a lot of people out there like me. I disagree with your "niche" assessment; it will never take over the whole market, no, but it will have more than 1 or 2% of the market share.

Re:VOIP is as the future... just like dial-up

[Total_Wimp]

Cell phones are great, and they fill an important gap, but they do not (in most demographics) compete with landline.

For now. But this article speaks of the future. A whole generation of college students is now seeing the landline as mostly irrelevant. They'll continue to see it that way as they enter the workforce, have kids, and buy those kids their own cell phones.

Landlines, as you point out, are not irrelevant _now_. But their the trend is definately moving in that direction.

Put another way, would you have invested much money in a buggy whip company if you could go back in time to 1900? Or typwriters if you stepped in the time machine to 1980? Or consumer landlines if you stepped in the time machine to.. well, no need to step. You'd take your short term profit, not invest for the long haul.

TW

Speculation

[mr_tommy]

Speculation on Google's intentions is almost as pointless as it is trying to guess when you'll die. The problem with basing stories on things like this (Google meeting with industry players) is that they could be doing so many other things; The Times run a similarly factually weak story early this year about how the company had plans to launch a VoIP service imminently. They based it of a story that Slashdot covered a month prior about how the company was buying dark fibre; now yes- it could be used for VoIP, but could be used for thousands of other things.

My point : Google != Microsoft. They haven't got a history of "leaking" stuff prior to product launch, and I doubt they'd do it this time.

Just once.

[jwcorder]

I would love to come to slashdot just one day out of the week and not see an article about what google MIGHT be doing or COULD be doing tomorrow. This is not news. Let me know when they ACTUALLY do something. And then only when it's something cool.

Re:How does it work?

[Big_Al_B]

One of the many price hooks of VoIP is that the calls are cheaper because they circumvent these fees. The PSTN switch that gateways the SIP/RTP or H.323/RTP into SS7/TDM is considered the originating switch.

In some cases, the call may translate several times between IP and PSTN worlds. Any PSTN origination or terminating fee tarriffs apply to the PSTN legs only, so international call billing may occur at several legs, and be billed each leg as a local, LD or a "cheaper" international call based on which carriers originate and terminate the various legs.

Regardless, the terminating PSTN carrier will see some termination fee based on the incoming trunk type.

They got the technology

[LupeSpywalper]

Maybe Google have found a way to search phone conversations. Maybe even in real time. So I can find an interesting conversation going on and just drop in.
And of course they will tie it to their map service. And no more dialling wrong numbers with their "did you mean" functionality. And maybe they could do a javascript "suggest topic" for those dull conversations ?

Hotsheet.

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

::ring::ring::
-------------
"Dick."
"Bush. Say listen, we got uh ... thingy goin' on over here with them googuhl folk."
"wtf?"
"Naw, sersly, they got some new Very onerous Intercontinental Puhbombs."
"P bombs ... what?"
"Yeah, yeah and that's them folks that help those, uh, whatchacall'em ... poor people find all that informations on how blowed'in' things up and steal musics. Listen, can i get 'em?"
*sigh* "I'll get my coat. See you in a few."

Are Mousepads in Google's future?

[Dan East]

Apparently, Google may begin manufacturing Mouse pads. According to an anonymous source, Google submitted an order for 150 pads. "Why would Google require so many mouse pads at once? Obviously they wish to study and analyze these pads so they can begin manufacturing themselves".

Another source said that some Google employees have had medical X-Rays as part of their health care screening. No word yet on when Google will begin manufacturing their own X-Ray equipment, but giving the combination of ivy-league graduates, the company-sponsored free-time employees are allowed, and the fact that they run a successful search engine, it is obviously only a matter of time. Look out General Electric!

Dan East

Makes Sense to Me

[Rollsbot]

It makes perfect sense to me. Everyone keeps saying that VoIP will be the end of the traditional phone system. So, what's everyone waiting on? Probably, a big company like Google get behind it and ensure that it's reliable, easy to use, and accessible.

What's more, imagine how valuable a Google ad would be if that ad resulted not only in a visit to your website but also a call to your business. Advertising has always been about getting calls; this makes it that much easier.

Google shouldn't follow Microsoft's approach...

[Anita Coney]

... and jump on every trend that comes and goes. It should stick with its core business: Helping people find porn.

In related news...

[A.K.A_Magnet]

Google launches Google Monitor !

Google Executives introduced today the latest of Google services, based on Google VoIP.

Google Monitor will record every VoIP conversation Google and its partners route, and will allow you to search for vocal patterns to match a particular conversation you had you would like to listen again.

Sadly, the day turned awkward when it was reported on Slashdot, the (in)famous technologist blog, that searching for "Google and dominance of the world, we 0wn j00 n00b haha and BillG sux dickz" (sic!) in the Google Monitor Search Engine and clicking the "I'm lucking" button directed to a private conversation Larry Page and Sergey Brin had about this very service.

"We were simply high, man", declared the Google founders when we asked them for further explanations.

Well, it definitely explains many moves the company from Montain View had these last few years.



(I don't endorse this comment, I'm testing a beta quantum computer at my local university and it seems the Quantum Leap put some text from the future in my paste buffer ;) Or it seems I share something with the Larry/Sergey from the future :p)

Google's REAL next frontier

[ca1v1n]

Google Pony (beta):

By combining advanced cloning, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, Google will provide a pony, free, to every boy or girl in the world that wants one. The ponies are photosynthetic, so they require no food, and they are infused with nanobots that recycle their own waste, so there's really no reason your parents can't let you have one.

Have you got anything without Google?

[Henk Poley]

Well, there's Google, egg, sausage and Google. That's not got much Google in it.

Google 'Talk Sense'

[DieByWire]

The VOIP will be free, but, a little voice will whisper into your ear sales pitches that will be relevant to your conversation.

He'll clearly identify himself as a sponsered part of your conversation, though. No confusing him with a real, unbiased friend.