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VOIP, The Traditional Telephony Killer?
FrenchyinOntario writes "According to an article on IT World Canada's web site, an Ontario-based technology research firm says that 23% of small-to-medium-sized businesses have already implemented VOIP technology, and that traditional telephony companies need to adapt or die (big surprise there!) in order to remain viable. I don't necessarily agree with research analyst's George Goodall's claim that "It may be too late," since VOIP still suffers from troubling security issues as well as the possibility of SPITstorms. It's still too early to tell whether it will be a rehash of ten years ago when the telephone companies (even before the rise of the ILECS after the 1996 Telecom Reform Act) pishposhed the rising popularity of the Internet until they jumped onboard at the last minute."
I wonder when we'll get error404s and telephone spyware when phoning.
Shudnt traditional telephone companies be more afraid of cellphones than VOIP?
With low power FHSS .. cell phones can all be WiFi style and routed over the net or each other .. there's a MIT paper on it.
Cell phone companies can be bypassed.
traditional tel companies can lobby congress to drive up the costs because idiots don't realize 911 won't work, which was told to the purchaser prior to the sale!
we can't compete, so lets buy leverage!
I have been using iConnectHere, which is very affordable, but I have problems with not being able to connect, and problems with audio make it impossible to hear the person on the other end. Other times, it works fine though. Perhaps they have too many users?
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
VoIP for personal use - yes. VoIP for small business - not ready for prime time.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
We have a lot of power outages around these parts. I kind of like how my telephone works even if I want my telephone tied to my Internet which is tied to my power. I suppose I could get a UPS for my cable modem and phone, but is that really optimal? Any battery source eventually dies.
I was just thinking to myself today that it sucks that my cordless phone doesn't work when the power goes out.
For me, power outages are a minor annoyance. But for companies? How can they deal with virtually all lines to their associates being cut?
In any case, I'll be keeping my landline and a "corded" phone for the time being.
(Unless someone has a solution for constant power outages?)
I think the people of America are finding that our government isn't working for us, and we're quite often doing things that are marked as "illegal" anyways, not because of ignorance of the law, but more because of a feeling that the law is not fair. Case and point of the above is file sharing.
But, I'm not going to go off into that tangent. Instead I'm going to say that we're going to find wireless archetectures being thrown up everywhere until we get to the point that our archetecture overthrows the one the government's trying to provide for us. Of course, cease and desist letters will fly from the government, but I believe that people simply won't listen for the same reason we don't listen to their filesharing BS.
People want to be connected. This is self-evident by the invention of conventional transporation and cellular telephones. The infrastructure for it is already in place through other infrastructures. I think the biggest problem we're about to run into is federal monopoly laws running aground with the Cable companies. Recently they just passed a law saying that broadband over cable is information only and non-telecommunication.
It's really time we stand up for what we want, and what we feel is right, and I think in a weird and obscure way, technology will enable us, and disable us. Pieces of technology will let us explain what we want in crystal clarity. Others will lock us down to biometrics and GPS devices. It's really time we start rewriting the Constitution to deal with these things.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I lease a T1 for voice and data. The line is run trhough an ADtran voice/data router on my premises. To my phone system everything looks like POTS but in actuallity its all voice over ip with bandwith being dynamically allocated as neccesesary. I know this is becoming very popular in my area because it drobs the cost of a full service business line from about 60/month net to about 40/month net and it allows for t1 data access at about 300/month.
As a home worker who has had VOIP (Vonage) in their house for over a year let me be the first to say that while this technology is great if you don't want to run up your cell phone minutes or your POTS LD bill it's still anything but mature. I have consistent issues with my VOIP phone from internet lag effecting the quality of a call to their NOC having power outages (no backup power apparently). Until VOIP can achieve the seamless integration that POTS does along with 4 9's in uptime, it's a nice alternative for people with specific needs but it won't kill the traditional POTS line into the house... Oh and by the way.. I live in Florida and went thru the hurricanes last year. Cell had no service for about a week. I had no power so therefore no VOIP AND while every other utility save water was not working, my POTS line was...
I work in CLEC telecom sales, and there is nowhere near that penetration, at least not in the Northwest. We find most businesses are very reluctant to use a technology that may present their business in a bad light to potential customers. eg bad voice quality, even if only occasional, can create an impression of a 'cheap' business, unwilling to spend the resources needed to be professional.
Lots of business owners ask about VoIP, but very few seem to adopt it.
(Note that I am NOT talking about personal or home use - just a traditional, brick-and-mortar business.)
The 23% of small business probably were never Avaya/Nortel/{favorite} PBX customers to begin with. All the big vendors for large to enterprise size customers have offered Voice Over IP for years on separated networks protecting them from SPIT and VOMIT. Busineses will adopt VOIP at the same rate they adopted digital sets. That is, when it is time for an infrastructure change. Most companies with older digital sets have some remote workers with VOIP already through ISDN lines or remote sourced IP connectivity.
Have you Meta Moderated t
why dont i get a flurry of automated phone calls when im at home?
because there are laws severe enough to prevent people from doing this.
the day voip wins over tel, is the day the same laws are applied in the new environment.
will lobbying prevent this?
I have been considering setting up VPNs with my friends internationally, then putting an asterisk box on everybody's local network. Then, we can just call each other's extensions nad not have to pay for the international calls. That's similar to what the major corporations do, so us "little people" should too. Just bypass the telcos altogether. :)
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
... until Dvorak says it is!
Businesses need "as good as copper - or better."
A VoIP company that can provide guarenteed quality of service plus 911 will be an even match for phones. If this service isn't here yet it's coming soon.
The third issue of VoIP - dependence on AC power - isn't as big an issue since many businesses already depend on power for their digital phone systems anyways. Cell phones are good enough for calling the electric company to report an outage.
Here's what I see happening:
Big-boy long distance networks will team up with ISPs to have "VoIP to your ISP, then use our QoS-enabled data networks to do the long haul at a rock-bottom price, terminating at a PSTN switch or the destination's ISP." Because it's VoIP, it won't be taxed as highly as PSTN. Because it has QoS guarentees, it meets the needs of businesses. Did I say team up with? In these days of mega-mergers, your IP provider and your LD provider may be one in the same.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I really hope that you paid Mr Stoller to use *his* word in your subject line. If not, you should be expecting a call real soon from his lawyers.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
traditional telephony companies need to adapt or die ... in order to remain viable.
Dying to remain viable. Gotta buy me some of that stock.
Landlines still cost .
Will there be a time when it wont ?
We recently experienced that problem at my office. Transformer was going bad and in several circumstances power was out for as much as 5 hours. My company is stupid at times. We didn't have any phones connected to analog lines so all we had to rely on was cell phones.
Point is, until it shows itself reliable and stable 24/7 as analog, analog will be around in some form.
Your post touches on something that is truth.
I am a rational anarchist, as in the kind from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. It seems that one of the facets of human nature is a desire to tell other people what to do, and what they may not do, often under the pretext of 'for their own good.
I dislike laws and government, however, I will accept any laws and government that other people feel are required for their safety and well-being. If I find a law tolerable, I tolerate it. If I find it untolerable, I ignore it.
I do not run around killing people because I would not normally do so; however, I would have no problem violating the law against depriving the government of a tax paying citizen (the worst crime of all), if I felt it neccessary to do so.
Same goes with all other laws. If I find it neccessary to act in a fashion which the law prohibits, I ignore the law. I also ignore laws which I find stupid.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
The company I work for uses VOIP primarily for internal use. We have offices in various locations, plus individuals travelling. However, the quality of the calls can be a real problem, especially in one of our offices, where the bandwidth is often saturated because of *very* large files being transferred in and out. Quite often during conference calls, we have people end up calling back on cell phones or regular land-lines.
I like VOIP for it's relative convenience and cost. However, in a lot of ways, it's like going back to the days when a pigeon landing on the telephone line outside your house could thoroughly garble the call.
http://www.verizon.net/fios/
Verizon sees the end of copper, and is trying very hard to get rid of it. Unfortunately, replacing all that copper takesa hughe a** amount of money and time. But I'll drop my cable the minute it is available here.
I'll tell you one thing. It was about the turn of the millenium maybe, maybe 2001 at the latest, and I had a friend doing his thesis at the strategic center of KPN (dutch telecom, the one which had the monopoly). When I first told him about VoIP, and how I thought that a few hackers (in the old sence of the word) could kill the traditional telecoms by setting up a few (yeah, I know) Wifi nodes per city, using cable only for city-to-city and trans continental transmission, gues what his first response was.
:P
First off, that department he was working in, which made strategic decisions for the company, had never heard of VoIP. But his first response was this: 'Well, isn't that illegal?' And he was serious. Even a slight monologue on the free part of the spectrum didn't convince him.
Ever since, I've been forwarding articles like this to him
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
I see half truth to these statements, our office took it up pretty quickly. However faster then you can say "cheese" our VoIP implementation just sits in the corner unused in favor of our old ISDN copper lines - sure VoIP was fun for the 95% of time, but the other 5% of the time when we found ourselves asking the customers on the other end "Can you hear me now" we decided to go back to what works, copper.
for the RBOCs. I've moved twice in the last 3 years and haven't felt the need for a copper phone line in either location. Both had cable TV so I was able to get a cablemodem for Internet and phone service and the few times that I wasn't able to use those (power outage) I simply used my cell phone. Considering that the local telephone company charges over $30/month for a plain old phone line (that's if you don't ever actually use it), I don't see myself ever being a customer again.
What is a SPITstorm?
Google on spitstorm and voip returns nothing, not a single hit.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I have noticed a lot of people complain about the quality of their VoIP service. What I haven't seen is the equipment they are using. Are they using a dedicated VoIP phone (ie Cisco 79xx) or are they running it through their PC.
:)
In theory - VoIP has the potential to be of higher quality than regular copper. The copper still has to go back to the exchange - then jump off on a T1/E1 back bone. That reduces the data used per time slot to around 64Kbit (E1). VoIP bandwidth requirements depend primarily on the codec and protocol being used.
I have been playing with Asterisk using AIX and G.711 and found the quality going from Australia to the US and back to Australia again to be quite awesome. I have a dedicated Asterisk server (running on a Dell 8100 Laptop) and connected to a Cisco 7940. The person I am speaking to is using a VoIP phone connected using SIP and G.711. We are utilising an American Free World Dialup Server. Both connections are TPG 1500/256. I have tested this connection during lengthy Diablo II games.
It is just the services evolving to become more integrated with our needs, although it will be some years before traditional phones become redundant, the change has happened, the same way Tapes were replaced by CD's.
Technnology models our own natural evolution, its pretty unavoidable.
I've had my Vonage service for over 2 years now. No interruption in service, and my 911 has worked fine for as long as I have had the service. If you can't read that you need to register your address to get 911 to work....well, maybe you are too stupid to live anyway.
And yeah, what that other guy said about cell service, once it is wifi...
For small business....why not, as long as you have the upstream to handle it, go for it. Considering most small business in the US anyway consist of less then 50 employees for the most part, again, why not. As long as the bandwidth is there to accomodate the useage that will be there there would be zero detriment to voice quality.
Then again if those businesses were given proper advice and had their networks setup and properly managed for them, if they need to rely on them, this would pose little to no problem.
I work for an ISP and can tell you that most small businesses are still too cheap to pay up for a business connection and try to run their business needs off of standard residential cable and DSL connections. As I scratch my chin and think of all THOSE cheap arses, VOIP is perfect, they honestly THINK that a cable connection to their pizza shop or whatever novelty screwup business they are running makes them appear more professional because they can get their e-mail in 10 seconds instead of 30. They rarely if ever are using any bandwidth, why not use that for VOIP. Then those same small businesses that are pinching every penny don't have to deal with the telco's at all, and if you are THAT paranoid why not just forward the calls to a backup business cell phone *IF there is an outtage.
If you are a larger business that actually has a budget, then you should have an IT dept/service that can properly advise you on the needs you would have to accomodate such an endevour, and chances are you have more then a cable/DSL modem to service your bandwidth needs.
Now I shall return back to my beer
My neighbor has VoIP from our cable provider. It goes out a couple times a week.
A friend several miles away has Vonage. It always sounds like she is stuck at the bottom of a well.
Local phone companies still have VoIP to the curb beat. Sadly.
They had to play catchup really fast. But when you have deep pockets and desktop OS lockin, it's not that hard.
With low power FHSS .. cell phones can all be WiFi style and routed over the net or each other .. there's a MIT paper on it.
Well, heck, if there's an MIT paper on it, then I can't understand why these companies and the government don't throw a hundred years worth of investment and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure out the window and start all over from scratch. After all, there's an MIT paper on it. That makes it golden.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
I'm afraid that I have to view your declaration as a "rational anarchist" as highly suspect. As a wanna-be Pak, I think you're a lot closer to a republican or a democrat.
Sucks when people have read the books you draw your incompatible inspirations from, eh? :-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Would somebody mind clarifying which part of telephony they're talking about? VoIP doesn't seem to pose a threat just to traditional phone companies -- right now, VoIP carriers, from what I can tell, offer all of the call quality of cellular service, and none of the convenience.
The real threat, to my mind, is to traditional PBX vendors, thanks in part to efforts like Asterisk, to say nothing of commercial soft switches from non-traditional players like 3com, Cisco, and Snom. It's possible that a company could "deploy VoIP" and still use a traditional phone company outside its walls. Unlike a call that goes over the open Internet to reach its destination, one company can manage its own network well enough to ensure that, for the part of the call that's VoIP, call quality isn't impacted. On top of this, remember that open standards like SIP and H.323 mean that a PBX vendor will have a harder time locking a client in to its own proprietary telephone sets. I'm kinda thinking intra-organization VoIP might be the thrust of the article, since they mention Nortel and Avaya (switch manufacturers) rather than, say, Verizon and SBC (carriers).
...Not about home users. At work you've got a 100Mb lan... at home you've got a 6Mb down 1Mb up (if you're lucky), and you're pretty far (latency) from wherever you are calling, and I doubt that the routers/switches your provider are configured to give your voice traffic good QOS.
However, in a business, you do configure VOIP traffic to have higher COS.
Maybe home VOIP traffic isn't there yet, but as a business solution, its pretty slick. Phones are upgraded by centralized management. Heck one day I had a 'camera icon' on my phone display, and the next day I could order 'ball camera' and now if i call somebody we can set up video conferencing.
Moving phones involves carrying it with you to your new location. Heck, I can even use my PC at home to act as my desk phone by using SoftPhone and my VPN. People call my desk phone and my computer rings.
Anybody tried this with a PBX based system?
...is if the VoIP that companies are switching to is for internal only, or actually using VoIP to talk to the world... Case in point: A regional retail chain that I worked for until recently had several new locations open this year. All of these new locations had Avaya VoIP phones (desk phones and cordless, using the WiFi access points installed for other use as well). Along with an Avaya box that prioritizes the VoIP traffic over any other network traffic, we never had an audio quality issue in the time that I was there. Now, when we called outside of the building, it got sent out through regular copper...
Ok, I use and deploy VOIP ALOT.
What the hell is a SPITStorm?
Um, yes, I think that was the idea.
omg omg this is such a novel concept
no one has ever predicted this would happen!
The unofficial
And you realize that your VoIP phone is in the room across the way and your Tivo is looking for a phone jack. You'll get that 'ah-ha' moment when you try and plug your VoIP box into the wall - with hopes that it won't interfere with your Speakeasy DSL or the telephone company's old wiring, only to find it doesn't work. Then you'll wonder if your secondary coordless handset's base has an external phone jack (for a fax or, in this case, a Tivo), and it won't. So naturally, you run to the store to buy a phone that has one, only to find that there aren't any.
Not to be deterred by this minor set back, you soon realize for another 80 bucks you can buy a phone repeater that runs off your power lines. Dear me; all this to record the Battlestar Gallactica marthon on Wednesday. But VoIP is so cheap; what's another 80 bucks...
At which point you'll soon discover the state of service for modem and fax transmissions over VoIP. Tivo's initial setup uses a telephone connection to update itself and its showtimes. Unfortunately modem packet loss on a VoIP connection causes the Tivo to cancel its updates.
It's frustrating and almost enough to make you quit. As it stands, Tivo appears to require a land-line until you're up and running. Afterwards you can switch to a USB to ethernet (or wireless adapter) to get further updates. Vonage has a ,*99 dialing prefix to improve the data transfer and Tivo has ,#034 and ,#019 dialing prefixes to (apparently) reduce the baud rate. My Packet8 doesn't seem to far too well. I guess I'll just lug it into work and update it there...
For more information, here's a useful reference: How to setup a tivo without a phone
You claim to be rational and try to shore it up with Heinlein. I take it you are to far gone to see the contradiction?
I'm almost disappointed in you guys!
Push the envelope. Watch it bend. -Tool
>> SPITstorms
Yeah, well y'all aint seen SPITstorms unless you done made my Freshman year English professor mad! That boy would froth at the mouth like a cross between a rabid dog and a cappuccino maker. Woo-wee, I tell yuh!
First level is your in-house voice transmission. This is how your voice is transmitted from your D-Mark in your office building. Second level is how your voice is transmitted to your D-Mark.
The first level is as good as copper or maybe even better(if you good networking gear) coz there is hardly any latency or lag and packet drops if your network is setup properly. This has many advantages over copper the biggest being you don't have to run two seperate POTS and internet lines if you bringing up your own building or using a warehouse.
The second level needs a bit of improvement. As there are many hops and so many factors that determine your packet drops and latency.
I have seen all combinitions of the above two-levels and while I have seen issues with the second level, the first level (inhouse) by itself is nearly flawless depending on your network admin.
--
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Last week's SC decision guaranteeing cable monopolies for data access practically creates this busines from the ground up. Cable companies will move into telephony big time now that they have protected markets and phone companies do not.
you can still have 911 access w/o the landline. practically everyone has a cellfone now. i mean even my 10 year old cousin has one now. i have friends who don't bother to even install landlines and use their cell phone has their primary contact number.
some may say that a cell phone service plan will be more expensive than a landline plan, but an unactivated cell phone can still make emergency calls due to some law. just have a cell phone charged up and make sure your location has a decent signal and you'll still be able to make your emergency calls.
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I live in Japan, so a lot of my landline calls up until last year were overseas.
Even before I was using VoIP, (Skype where I can,) it turned out that a lot of the long distance providers were using VoIP to route the calls and the quality was simply terrible.
It was so bad that I would have to keep trying different services until I found one that wasn't overloaded and dropping parts of the conversation all over the place.
It won't be long before they're doing that for local calls here as well.
Now, for 90% of the calls back home, I use Skype and the quality is excellent. Sure, most of it is Skype to Skype, but the benefit of that is that Presence is added and I actually know that the person is around and available to talk, as I usually send a quick text message before initiating a voice call.
If the local telcos demand reliable 911 access, they should pay for an emergency-only phone that uses copper to be put into every location that requires it. It should be red and maybe inside a glass case like a fire extinguisher. No buttons, either, just pick it up and you're connected to an operator.
-- My Weblog.
The confusion here is that VoIP stands for two related, but different, things. TFA was (as far as I can tell) just about using IP internally to your building to replace your PBX and phone-specific wiring. At the edge of your company, the calls would be sent over regular phone lines. The article wasn't very explicit about this, but given comments about things like avoiding two sets of wiring, that's what I'm pretty sure they were talking about.
Something like iConnectHere, Vonage, etc, are about sending voice over the internet. And in this case it is a lot harder to make sure you are getting the quality of service that you need for voice.
These two different ways of using VoIP both have the potential to be revolutionary, but in different ways. In one cases it is the PBX vendor in the crosshairs, in the other the long-distance or local phone company.
This seems like a gross generalization of all VoIP services. You know if one VoIP service is bad, you could always switch to another and try them.
And this is the brilliance of VoIP, you can switch to a new voip system very easily. The wire into your building is your internet connection, and its the same no matter what VOIP system you use. Perhaps you should have tried other VOIP systems first? I'm not a small business owner but I have Vonage and the only connection problems I have ever had I had confirmed were due to my comcast internet connection, and not Vonage. Even still, those outages were few and far between, and I hope to get a better service sometime in the future.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Letsee, the business owner has to manage two distinct networks, IP and telephony. However, any way you slice it, if you can come up with a technology that will enable the business to reduce the number of networks (components, cabling, management frameworks, admin personel) and hence expenses. This is a Good Thing (TM). The same holds true for storage arrays, operating systems, server vendors etc..
If you've already got people to manage your IP network, why not just extend them to include voice?
Traditional PBX doesn't even offer me the choice of reducing expenses.
Newer switches & routers can pass 48 volts over unused pins of an Ethernet cable, or can have an adapter connectd to it that will do so. The system is intelligent so that the average PC NIC card won't get destroyed by the voltage.
Assuming that the 48 volt source is properly backed up (batteries), it should stay up through most power failures. Not cheap, though.
The RBOCs didn't miss the boat and jump in at the last minute, they slowed the industry and got in cheap. They had a war chest full of cash and the upstart IP and DSL providers didn't. By continually making it extremely difficult for CLECs to access their copper facilities, the RBOCs made providing DSL a slow, expensive process - which in turn made it a horrible product for consumers. (Any guesses why cable modems flourished much earlier than DSL?) After the RBOCs starved out the CLECs, waited out the IP providers, tortured the IP equipment providers, and studied their operational models, the RBOCs began building and acquiring IP networks in earnest and at a small fraction of the cost.
In their minds and business models, they had to slow the adoption of broadband because they hadn't depreciated the 5E's they bought to handle the surge of modem lines. (They were forced by regulations to support POTS lines).
Believing that they were to dumb and arrogant to recognize that the Internet existed is just false. The RBOCs/ILECs sold the damn modem lines and local loops for T1's and T3's that the Internet ran over. They knew it was there and they knew it was too fast moving and expensive for them to engage in. So they starved their competition and waited out the storm.
Don't expect VoIP to be much different. Most RBOC and IXCs are offering some form of VoIP now.
Also, the VoIP that most people are commenting on is not what the article is referring to. It's talking about in-house IP-PBX's not IP Centrex or similar. Examples of an IP PBX are Cisco's Call Manager, Nortel Business Communications Manager (BCM), Avaya's IP office or Communications Managere, etc., etc.
Also, EVERY major PBX manufacturer is and has been focused on VOIP for some time now. NONE of them are developing TDM features, phones, etc. At the last VoiceCon vendors were asked whether they would even sell a non-IP system.
In summary, I found the article and commentary to be relatively wanton and uninformed.
My company gave it a shot, and in two months switched back to traditional telephone lines. The problem we faced is that the small provider we were working with could not provide the proverbial 5 9's of uptime -- that is to say that even once we picked up the phone and did not have a dial tone. Telephones truly are critical in this business world -- the our internet connection could go down for an afternoon and it's only an annoyance. When the phone goes down an afternoon, its thousands of dollars of business. I strongly believe VOIP providers need the same level of regulation and responsibility as traditional providers because telephone is usually the first and most important link to emergency services, business contacts, friends and family, etc.
More Caffeine. NOW
VOIP may trump POTS, but having a phone book listing for a business trumps VOIP. Until Vonage or the like can get you an entry in the yellow pages, a lot of small business will be stuck with at least one POTS line...
I'm never sure what a small business is but I doubt 23% of the ones in Canada use VoIP. My impression is that more large companies have the IT staff that has spend the time to deploy it than small companies. I'm sure it will take over at all companies. Already, all the major PBX manufactures are pretty much only selling VoIP if you want a new system.
I do find the quality arguments on slashdot very strange and lacking much real information. Enterprises run VoIP over LAN, usually 100 Mbps LANs - the quality is very good. Whatever quality you get from a dialup from china with Free World Dialup has nothing in common with what happens in enterprise VoIP. My only business phone since 1999 has been a VoIP phone. Not once has someone been able to tell the difference from a traditional phone. With wideband codecs, the quality is better than anything on the PSTN. Now, I know there are VoIP deployments that have voice quality problems but if you are on a LAN it is really easy to avoid them. If you are on a WAN, you probably need to do a little basic traffic engineering but nothing that complex. For many users, Vonage ends up with PSTN quality voice and that has basically no traffic engineering running over a random low grade broadband connection. I imagine some peoples broadband has turned out not to work well with things like Vonage but for the vast majority, it works out well. But my points is, voice quality on a small business LAN has nothing to do with the problems of VoIP over broadband and the public internet.
With things like Skype, and Gizmo Project [1], I really don't see the need to use land lines. I haven't had a land line for almost a year now, and never missed it. I pay $0/month in fees, and pay low rates only when I call (I use Merit Call for VOIP).
[1] http://www.gizmoproject.com/
review: http://www.techcrunch.com/?cat=45
Simpy
AT&T.
Read about my experience w/ AT&T here: AT&T VOIP review
Not sure that I understand how the bells aren't 'getting' VOIP - AT&T not only has a rate competitive service w/ standalone VOIP provider Vonage, but they've had the 911 issue resolved for the duration of my coverage with them, much longer than other VOIP providers have.
First mail had a cost (stamps/postage)
Now mail is free (email). Thus I have spam.
First phones had a cost.
Now they will be free (VOIP) what do you think will happen now?
If I find a law tolerable, I tolerate it. If I find it untolerable, I ignore it.
In other words, you do what the hell you like, and if it happens to be legal, well, that's just lovely.
Don't dress selfishness up as something grander than it really is.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Yeah, VOIP will kill off traditional telephony just as soon as Comcast figures out how to make my connection stop cutting o^^^^NO CARRIER^^^^
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
It will repace ISDN based telephony in businesses long before it 'kill' trad telephony. Isn't VOIP a form of telephony anyway?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
First mail had a cost (stamps/postage) Now mail is free (email). Thus I have spam. First phones had a cost. Now they will be free (VOIP) what do you think will happen now?
Yeah, I NEVER get shit in the mail.
It's not selfishness. I do things that are altruistic. I help other people as I am able and as I feel they need the help. However, I do nothing whatsover to violate another person's freedom of choice. If someone chooses to refuse my help, I do not lock them in an institution or schedule an 'intervention.' It's their choice to not seek help, or to refuse help when given. Even when that person is a loved one.
Freedom of Choice is the ultimate. It must be protected at all costs.
However, that doesn't mean I can choose to kill someone when they're choosing to try to kill me.
I'm also a pacifist -- however, I don't let that stop me from being reasonable.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Note: I'm drunk as I write this, so pl;ease excuse spelling errors.
Actually, I'm style myself as Brennan-monster, not a true Pak Protector, sense the Human branch of Pak have diverged too far from the Pak Model (one of the reasons Brennan was afraid the Pak would try to exterminate us.)
After all, hte Pak Breeder is a nonsentient creature. The Human Breeder is sentient.
Anyway, I made this name when I was 12 or so. I'm 19 now. I think I was twelve. Was sometime back then.
And it's not that a Protector has any choice in the matter. Just look at the details from Brennan and Teela, to take just two (only two we have good records of.) The protector's intsinct to defend their bloodline is genetic. They can't fight it. Even Brennan, when Roy Truesdale was trying to kill him, couldn't do something that would kill Roy. Even after he shattered Roy's arm, sent what time he had left trying to save loy's life so that Roy could infect the planet.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Even the most hardcore anarcho-punk bands have their tour vans inspected, registered and insured.
Why am I not rapping? I am rapping with you in a way.
These same bands I hold to be false. Most people cannot stomach, nor are they cut out for, true anarchy.
Bands like 'Rage Against the Machine,' while not 'hardcore,' are living a double life. The very machine they rage against is the machine that they themselves are a part of.
And just because one is an Anarchist does not mean that one disobeys all laws. To do so is a strictly contrarian mindset. Vehicle Registration and Inspection both serve good purposes. If my vehicle is registered with the State (which it is,) it is far easier to track down if it is stolen. And it is inspected for safety reasons. I am not a Mechanic, and I do not know near enough about every facet of my vehicle's systems to ensure that it can function in a proper and safe manner.
And insurance is just a good idea.
I think you failed to see my point.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Guys, I am a little ignorant in this issues. I thought the medium/wire that carry the internet are mostly owned by traditional communication companies, and internet is almost free because they kind of subsidize the internet traffic, while the traditional voice traffis is their cash cow. If their cash cows run away, being chased by the VOIP, they will probably start metering internet traffic, and hence internet become more expensive. Thus, the advantage of VOIP goes away.hen enter the text in that file's own buffer.
VOIP has also been in use in many corporate environments for office-to-office communications, especially internationally, even if it's not used to connect to the telco for outbound calls or inbound customer calls. Back in the mid-80s, everybody ripped out their inter-PBX tie lines because it was cheaper to buy telco phone service by the minute and reduce the management effort; these days, people are putting those things back in, because the economics often justify it, even though long-distance phone minutes keep getting cheaper.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you get business VoIP services from many ISP's, you still have to get a PRI (ISDN over a T1) to get your voice services and you're still getting it from a *LEC.
Sure, you're not paying long distance fees but you're still paying a telco for services. The same ones in some instances that you would for traditional services.
And on top of that, The business VoIP services charge per seat. One ISP in particular charges between 25$ and 60$ per seat per month, no matter how many of those people ever use the phone.
I just moved/upgraded our phone system to a new office. We're a 16 person shop plus conference rooms and other common phones. One ISP's business VoIP was going to cost us ~$1,300 a month. Similar prices across the industry. Turns out it was much cheaper to keep the traditional telephone infrastructure and use an asterisk based solution as our PBX. We're paying less than $500 a month for our PRI, plus calls. Still significantly less than what most VoIP solutions were going to cost.
I think what we're seeing here in regards to sticking it to the old guard has not very much to do with VoIP from the perspective of SME's. It's the legislation that's given us CLEC's that's the real revolution. I was able to get our PRI from XO, so we're divested of SBC. That's money that the old school telco's just lost. I think in time, wether your running traditional voice services over your connection or VoIP, it's this bleeding from a thousand cuts that CLEC's represent to the ILEC's that's really going to take down the old carriers.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
soon, the major telephone monopolies will patent the process whereby "technology facilitates the comunication between two or more humans whose distant is greater than 5 meters." and VOIP will die.
Connections between corporate offices have also been moving to VOIP, especially for international connections. You might not use them to talk to customers, but for internal calls they're fine. A few years ago the choices were between adding a voice board to a router (connecting to the PBX with T1), or adding an IP board to the PBX (usually more expensive, but better integrated for support), but now IP PBXs are becoming more common.
Connections to the outside world are gradually becoming more widely used, and everybody in the telco business is trying to figure out how to make money on it even though the prices keep getting radically lower.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Cable companies were found to information transfer companies not telecomunications companies. If the telephone companies (+ISP can't get on to their system), how can they argue that they are entitled to do anything outside of information transfer (ie no voice).
It would seem to me that the ISP's and Telephone companies may now have a precedent blocking Cable companies from setting up VOIP.
If not, they could at least appeal it to the SC and point out the inherent inconsistency of their recent ruling (not that the court isn't getting more and more incoherent as it becomes a political rather than a judicial body).
I'm begining to think there should be no further supreme court appointments. That way eventually the taxpayers could save quite a bit on salaries, clerks, security, office supplies, etc). After all, we have enough politicians already. I'm sick of all the speculation on nominations already and the process hasn't even started.
I guess my role is simply to catch the shit as it rains down, and oh yes, pay for the clean up after things like the war get screwed up.
Has anyone developed integrated software systems with/for VOIP?
... eg., click a link in your web or desktop application to initiate a call.
My company's IT dept. has been looking for resources/advice re: developing in-house software integrated into VOIP systems
Can anyone offer advice / links to good resources?
Irony is when I call 411 on my not-cheap SBC copper telephone line, in order to resolve an issue with the DSL circuit on said phone line, only to reach some guy in India, with a strong, almost unintelligible accent, made all the worse for having a craptacular VOIP telephone with insufficient bandwidth/latency to pull off a phone call that doesn't go something like this:
Me: There is a routing problem with the DSL circuits, and my two branch offices won't connect with each other.
Him: Diz yoo tly to rabute the marmen?
Me: I'm sorry, can you try again?
Him: Dickt do try to rownon the mfarfen?
Me: You know, I'm not making heads or tails of this - can you please try again?
Him: Did joo tly to rnoof za noden?
Me: I think you are asking me if I tried to reboot the modem. Is that what you are asking me?
Him: Ysh
Me: Yes. I also rebooted both computers, and the hub and router. I still have the same problem...
(BTW: The above conversation went on for some 20 minutes, before "Him" told me that the problem was not on his end, and to contact our "Network Administrator". After very clearly(!) telling him that's who I was, and the problem was NOT ON MY END and could I PLEASE TALK TO SOMEBODY WHO COULD HELP ME, I was forwarded to somebody with a clear phone line, who spoke English as a primary language, who, after about 3 minutes, said: "How's this?" and everything worked fine after that. I wish I was exaggerating)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
They *could* annoy the local telcos, except that (at least in the US), most of them own cellphone companies anyway, and the cellular business lets them compete outside their base geography. Also, while some single people may very well stop using landline phones and only use cell phones, many of those people still have a phone line for DSL, and businesses still use wired phones. Also, about half of the local telcos used to bitch about people using phone lines for modem internet service and messing up the cost model (the other half said "oh, good, we get to sell more phone lines") so we're really just helping them out.
VOIP annoys your local phone company if you're using a cable modem, because they don't get the money - but if you have DSL, they still get to rent the copper lines to your house, and the DSLAM on the end is a lot cheaper than a #5ESS voice switch. They still make money, and if you bought the DSL line partly to run VOIP instead of Napster, well good for you. Also, until the current telco service mostly disappears, VOIP services like Vonage pay by the minute to deliver calls to telco customers, so the local telcos still make money from it (sometimes more than they would from flat-rate lines.)
And the 911 agitation isn't mostly from the local telcos - it's mostly from emergency service bureaus, whose architecture is heavily dependent on the telco infrastructure and the underlying design assumptions (like phones being in well-defined places), who will have to spend a lot of money to develop more flexible architectures unless they can bully the VOIP businesses into doing that (and they don't have budget sources to get the money they'd need.) It's also coming from the wiretapping fans in the FBI, HomelandSecurity, and some police agencies, who not only want to prevent current targets from becoming un-tappable, but who want to gain lots more detailed surveillance capabilities with less judicial oversight (inconveniences like warrants, etc.) - they've been successful at getting cellphones to report position information by whining about how ambulances won't be able to find your grandmother when she's fallen and can't get up, and are doing the same with VOIP.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
DSL service, on the other hand, doesn't get the same repair priorities that POTS service gets, especially if it's from a CLEC that's renting copper as opposed to an ISP using a telco-managed DSLAM. If your DSL goes out, it'll often take a while for that to get fixed also.
And the backup for residential VOIP service is cell phones (do you know anybody who has VOIP who doesn't have a cell phone? Probably 95-99% of cable modem and DSL users also have cell phones...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The most constrained bandwidth in the network is usually your upstream, and that's the easiest place to prioritize. The second most constrained bandwidth is usually your downstream - that's harder to fix, but not usually full. Sometimes the connection from your DSLAM to your ISP's backbone routers will be too heavily oversubscribed, and that can be a performance problem too, but once you've hit your ISP's backbone, you're in safe territory, even though your packets aren't marked for priority.
If your ISP *wanted* to get fancy, prioritizing UDP packets over TCP packets would do the job, with one exception - some P2P programs. Fortunately, BitTorrent uses TCP.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm curious exactly what the term anarchy means to you since from what you have said I have drawn the following conclusions:
1) You are happy to have a government making laws
2) You agree the government needs to regulate society
3) Companies, big business and commerce - no problem
4) You may decide to ignore laws you don't like
I am not happy to have a government making laws. But I will bear it, since I will ignore laws that I do not agree with.
I do not accept that government needs to regulate society. However, I accept that some of the regulations put forth by the government have some good idea behind them. (Such as vehicle emission standards, and safety inspections. However, saftey should not require a government mandate. It should come naturally.)
If a company does something wrong, don't use them. No matter what. Also, if you really don't need it, do without it. For example, I really don't buy much besides food and the occasional book. I don't require much more (aside from housing and clothing, which I don't buy often either. Once a month for housing (rent), and clothing maybe twice a year when the old wears out and can't be fixed.)
It's more than not liking a law. I can not like something and still concede that it has some merit to it. Such as a minimum driving age. While it's a stupid regulation (much as my Grandpa thought, when he taught me to drive an automatic when I was 7,) most people (read: parents and their children) are too stupid to be allowed to make the decision for themselves. Actually, most parents are too stupid to be allowed to have children.
Rational Anarchy comes down to a few basic points, which I will try to clarify, and I hope someone will correct me if I get them wrong. Perhaps Mycroft will see this.
It's about completely personal responsibility. For example, "The Game Made Me Do It" doesn't fly. You are entirely responsible for all of your actions, including actions that lead up to another action. Some people claim that 'They are not responsible for what they do while drunk,' i.e., things said and done. However, they are responsible for choosing to drink, and responsible for not stopping before they became inebriated. Therefore, since they caused their situation, they are responsible for what they do in said situation.
It's also about minding your own business. What a consenting adult (to use the language of these days) does to themself, with themself, or by themself (or with another 'consenting adult,) is none of my or your business. It's about personal choice and freedom of choice, the most sacred things there are.
However, if someone chooses to punch me in the face, I can choose to punch them right back. That's called being 'rational.' It's about accepting responsiblity for your actions in a rational way. Such as, if you topple a government and then install a dictator, who is then toppled, and the people there now hate you and try to destroy your country, don't act suprised.
'Government' does not exist, save for as exemplified in the actions of individuals. The 'government' never does anything. Individuals do. A judge sentances a man to death. Not a government. However, who is responsible for that man's death? The police, who arrested him, the jury, who convicts him, the judge, who sentances him, or the man who actually throws the switch?
I'll give you a hint: The man who throws the switch.
Similar example: If the current President Bush chose to drop an H-Bomb on, say, Iran, who is responsible for said bomb, if it is indeed dropped? As much as I dislike Bush, not him. It would be the person in the plane (or in the silo) who pushed the 'launch' or 'release payload' button. No one else.
Rational Anarchy is about trying to live by this code of personal responsiblity, while acknowledging that others may or may not, and realising that, being an imperfect human, it is impossible to do so, but not giving up because of it.
Rational Anarchism is highly connected to the 'Thou Art God' 'religion' from Stranger in a Strange Land. Valentine Michael and all his 'Water Brethren' are Rational Anarchists. If nothing else, knowing that Mike kills people who are in jail who are too dangerous to be released instead of leaving them there, while he frees the rest, would be a sign of that. After all, since Ration
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
VOIP could replace the telco infrastructure with something that would be far cheaper, simpler, and almost as reliable, if only you could build it from scratch without needing to talk to traditional phones. Doing a smooth transition is much much harder, and of course it's not clear that the traditional telcos would make the money, so they're desperately trying to find ways to do that, such as becoming Internet carriers and buying cellphone companies.
The big things driving the current telco infrastructure are
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
23% of Canadian companies have implemented VOIP????? Perhaps the OP means deployed.
"after the rise of the ILECs" should be after the rise of the CLECs. The ilecs have always been there. Competative local exchange carrier vs. imcumbent local exchange carrier.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
How about writing a Skype to SIP gateway. That's because of an offer of 1und1.de of a calling 'flatrate' for around 10/month to any landline in Germany.
r -own-chat-cord/
If I had such a gateway, I would offer people free calls to numbers in Germany, maybe asking them for a small donation if they use it a lot, so I can cover my expenses.
However, I didn't find any OS or free (as in beer) configurable SIP client to connect this to... I've looked a bit into the Skype API, and it seems connecting to Skype should work (one problem being that Skype needs to connect to a soundcard, so I would also need a 'virtual' soundcard, if I don't want to connect two soundcards together) or connect the phone line to the soundcard (my modem/router handles the SIP translation), which probably could be done with a device similar as the one presented here: http://www.grynx.com/index.php/projects/build-you
What do you think of this idea, would you place a call through a Skype-SIP-PSTN gateway (privacy implications...)?
Maybe you know of a solution already?
Kind Regards,
Florian
Well it's a nice idea but it's never going to work.
Just put up an article on this new xMax tech, you might be interested in it. At my technocrat link.
...need to adapt or die in order to remain viable.
What does it mean for a dead company to be viable?
they are the suppliers. The wiring and maybe a card or two inside the cage are different. The voicemail systems are the same. The biggest problem with VOIP are the local phone guys that sell these systems. They don't have the technical chops to correctly install and configure VOIP.
Power goes out a lot where I live rural, but the landline usually stays at least semi functional, albeit "noisy" during a storm. If the grid power is down for more than an hour or two I just use an old truck battery I have that I keep charged up and a voltage adapter, and can be back on the net quickly using an older powerbook I have. The one battery lasts at least a full day easily. I've never run it flat so I don't know exactly how long it would really last. Cheap backup. And if it stays down for a longer time I can recharge it from my (very modest) solar array I have installed on my RV, which uses 4 golf cart batts for energy storage.
But ya, on laptops and their internal batts. Seems to me if folks weren't as fixated on having the lightest laptops, we could have around 10lb laptops (like from not too many years ago in size basically) with nice cpus, etc, but with decent sized and redundant cheap batteries. It's having small,light AND long lasting that is the problem there. You just can't get the manufactuers to make one, well, at least I haven't seen one for sale lately like that. It would be a niche market, but most markets ARE niche markets when you get down to it. Modern designs use a lot less power, so if they just used modern tech with the older size/form factor with laptops and actually included decent sized batteries you could have something that lasted beyond a few hours. As it is now you have to cobjob it, but it's still doable.
WORST move my company ever made. It's ridiculously unreliable--when clients call in, the first thing we do is tell them that if we're disconnected, we'll call them back--on our mobiles.
Oh yes, of course they've traced this and tried that, and "it should be okay now," etc. But we're still throwing our phones in frustration.
I will bet there'll be a backlash, and then the provider companies will start getting serious about reliability, and only then will it be safe to switch over.
In particular, how does existing telephony traffic compare to existing Internet traffic? There are an awful lot of POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) calls being made, and putting a decent proportion of them onto the Internet will presumably take a significant bandwidth. But how significant? Are we talking about double the amount of Internet traffic? Or will it just be the equivalent of another couple of spam emails each...
If it is significant, then it strikes me that the real cost of VOIP isn't on its users, or even on their ISPs, but on the whole of the Internet infrastructure. In other words, we all pay -- in reduced bandwidth and increased latency, and/or in higher ISP charges. Which sounds like a tragedy-of-the-commons situation...
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
I've had VoIP for about 6 months now and I've been far less than impressed with its performance.
Sometimes the terminal won't sync up. When it does, you can place calls and receive them, but there's this strange little phenomenon that occurs where you are speaking but the other party can't hear you. Sometimes it will blank out altogether and come back after about 10 seconds, but when I speak, the other party can't hear me.
Sometimes I go to dial a call and after dialing, nothing happens. Just silence. You can see the packets getting sent but nothing ever happens.
Sometimes it works great and I can complete a 4-hour call with no problems. It's just unreliable. Can't count on it.
For one, rage against the machine is a horrible, horrible example. Try Aus-Rotten (who maybe you should listen to), or better yet, RAMBO. I perhaps took for granted that my example, perhaps only I find rediculous. Inpsection is bullshit, and is primarily around to make revenue for the state of the many tickets they write. Don't Agree? My state raised the size of fines last summer (tourist season) to help balance to budget. My point is, that regardless of my opinion of this law, it would be idiodic not to follow. I would be an ineffectual dissident. My point is that you have to pick and choose your battles, if your goal is actually anarchy, if you value freedom and autonomy for every one. If your just following what laws you choose, saying you're living the life now, with no goal for change (for others), you're merely being selfish and blind. Of course anarchy (like all governments) requires that people be responsible, and I don't feel that they are. I know I'm not. I don't think we've progressed to point where people could handle it. (note: that I'm not arguing for our current system) Well, I'm starting to ramble so I'll leave it at that. Rock out with your black bloc out.
Why am I not rapping? I am rapping with you in a way.
In other words, you do what the hell you like, and if it happens to be legal, well, that's just lovely.
Don't dress selfishness up as something grander than it really is.
Hey, lets bring back the good laws like slavery, prohibition, and company.
Laws are made by falable people, therefore laws are falable as well. Its not any more selfish to use common sense than not.
I too follow whichever laws I feel like, and ignore the others. When governments disgrace their own integrity by passing and trying to enforce rediculous laws, then how can they then be upset when people don't follow the laws or respect their authority?
Yes, it's sad people like you won't live to see it.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Picking and choosing your battles would be being rational. I see no conflict.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
I've never heard of a SPITstorm before and it seems Google hasn't either.
... when someone offers me an IP-based service that stays up, even when the electricity goes down, and has the long-running reliability of my landline phone.
I have VOIP with Vonage, connected to my cable modem, and a cellphone, but those are for the backup and away-from-home lines. The call-911-and-it-won't-fail line is POTS, thank you very much.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
It's "respect mah authoritah". You don't want Cartman to come and make you eat your own parents, do you?
Don't worry about me I have no expectation of witnessing miracles in my lifetime.
Maybe if you could find a group of like minded individuals cut yourself off from the rest of the world ( or exterminate the rest of humanity ) on an island or something with enough resources to go around it would work for a maybe a generation or so - maybe less. After that people would form factions and you either go back to democracy with a leader or government or engage in a war with your opponents.
What you are talking about is a dream, it's not practical, it ignores reality and it's never going to work.
Selling magazines from a boilerroom is not mission critical.
or is it selling jelly to support "widows of fallen police officers"?
I forget which kind of telephony SPAM you're pushing this week.
They are probably thinking about extra revenues from applications. Application servers for SIP and Asterisk bring more value there.
I loved "Protector", great book.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Did you miss the parts about, "knowing that one is imperfect and will never be able to meet this ideal, yet not giving up?"
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
I was never angry at you. You're a pretty hoopy frood, knowing about the Greatest War that virtually No One In Known Space Knows About.
Now, for something really cool, one day I will have someone video tape me when I'm drunk. I talk Loonie when I'm drunk.
And damn well.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Not exactly. In other words, an ethically mature individual does not need someone else's code of laws to tell him what he can and cannot do. He already has his own. It also helps to recognize that other people may not wish to have the same sort of lifestyle that you enjoy.
For instance, I do not use narcotics. The strongest drugs I use without medical reasons are sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and whatever it is that they put in the fries at McDonald's. But I do not begrudge junkies their heroin, or potheads their weed. Nor do I enlist the government to watch everyone's consumption of certain substances because I may lack the self-control to moderate my own.
Murder, theft, rape, fraud--these are things that most of us can agree are wrong. We don't need laws telling us not to use our own radio spectrum for our own mutual benefit, just because it just might hurt the telcos. The governments are not looking out for your interests any more, if they ever were. They are now only interested in whether your accounts are paid up enough to not get a face-full of pepper spray and both of your hands and someone else's knee in the small of your own back, while a kevlar-clad ninja scans your universal ID to see what rights you qualify for with your current credit rating.
"This quote is a product of the Frobozz Magic Quote Company."
and like the VCRs killed the movie industry.
Wait, didn't the mobile phones and the internet kill the landline phones already 10 years ago?
I work in Southern Ontario and have interest in an ISP which supplies access to small to mid size businesses, we have zero VOIP customers. One partner does use VOIP for internal communications. The cheap voip pbx like asterisk can change things but for most companies who are set with a nortel type pbx that they invested in ages ago and meets the needs of the company are not going to switch out.
We don't even use voip in our office cause it's not mature enough and we already have enough phones and our existing phone system works.
That's freedom.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I ordered service with Vonage early this year. A month or so later I decided to get rid of the POTS from SBC which I consider to be one of the most evil companies around, which required a dedicated DSL line to be put in. Vonage told me it would take about 20 business days. Two months later it still wasn't put in. Long story short, their own support people screwed up twice and they wouldn't admit it, cancelling my order to transfer my POTS phone number to the VoIP line.
It cost me well over hundred bucks in SBC bills I wouldn't have had to pay if Vonage had done their job. Finally about a month ago after somehow managing to not cuss out the Vonage supervisor I got the stuff put in, and at least he gave me $50 credit for the delay, even though they never admitted they screwed up. I'm still angry and disappointed. The only reason I've stayed with them is the toll free option.
Caveat emptor.
You mentioned the Big Three IP PBX's (Cisco Call Manager, Nortel BCM and Avaya's Comm Manager)
My company is currently planning a full rip-and-replace of all of our network gear, including LAN switching and (possibly) routing gear, but definitely will be deploying an IP PBX solution of some sort.
Your informed thoughts on this would be appreciated. Avaya claims to be the best IP PBX all around, but (I believe) their strength is in call centers. Nortel has the lead (I believe) with their install base of BCM's. Cisco claims to have a great product, but are the johnny-come-latelys and seem to take a fair amount of bashing (for good and for bad.)
However, Cisco is the 800lb gorilla that's best of breed for data/switching/routing. My thoughts are that I want to have the best possible transport (cisco) and if it takes them a while (1 - 2 years) for them to catch up to Avaya (or heck, just BUY them or someone else outright) that's OK, because I still have a rock-solid network foundation.
Again, any input from recent decision-makers would be most welcome.
What everyone is forgetting is that VOIP systems will need serious UPS protection on every part of the system.
Since a VOIP network device requires power, that means that they need either a separate power line, an internal battery, or Power-over-Ethernet capability. However, with the exception of a device with an internal battery, any VOIP device will stop working during a power failure unless it has its own UPS.
Some VOIP providers will deliver power along with connectivity, but most will leave last-mile infrastructure to the user. This means that anyone installing their own VOIP devices must also provide power backup, or they will be high and dry in any power failure.
This is not the case with POTS, as the power comes with the signal.
Power supply and power redundancy, IMHO, will be the biggest hidden cost and failure generator in implementing VOIP.
Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild