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."

Comments

Not if

[hsmith]

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!

VoIP not a small business solution

[toddbu]

Small business lives and dies by its reputation, and the poor call quality of VoIP can really impact customer perception of a business. After using a VoIP solution for a full year, we dumped it in favor of copper. I know that I didn't like having to try to figure out what my customer was saying, and I'm sure that they felt the same way about me.

VoIP for personal use - yes. VoIP for small business - not ready for prime time.

Re:VoIP not a small business solution

[kebes]

I think you might be over-stating the quality difference of VoIP. My VoIP phone is nearly indistinguishable from a normal landline, and I'm sure if I had a business-class internet connection, it would be even better.

You're absolutely right that reputation, and hence ease of phone conversations is important to small businesses. However, one should also consider the fact that VoIP gives a small business the ability to do things they would never consider otherwise. For instance, you could expand into markets in other regions, and not be worried about the innumerable number of long-distance phone calls that this would entail (calling other vendors, distributors, etc. that are not local). So I feel like VoIP may give the opportunity for a small business to "act" like a bigger business, making long-distance phone calls without worries. Depending on the business, this could be a major cost savings.

I think it's a viable option, and more importantly (as TFA sorta points out) as the technology gets better, the advantages of VoIP will mount (whereas the cost should remain low)...

Of course, IANASBO (I Am Not A Small Business Owner), so I might be off-base here.

Re:VoIP not a small business solution

[killjoe]

Wow that's amazing, I can't even begin to count the number of times I have had all kinds of bad quality calls from cellphones and yet I have never dropped a vendor or lost a client because of them.

You must be working with some the of the pickiest most anal customers on the planet.

Re:VoIP not a small business solution

[jericho4.0]

People expect crappy connections with cell phones sometimes. People also expect to get a perfect connection when making a local call to a front office.

Re:Problems with iConnectHere

[tftp]

I used to have an iConnectHere account, and they indeed had connection problems from time to time. But the killer problem was not that, it was bad audio, and that can't be easily fixed.

I doubt that the poor audio quality is caused by iConnectHere, it's more likely to be the network from my PBX to them. Packet switching networks are not configured for guaranteed latency; if some are, good luck ripping your ISP roots out and migrating to a possibly better ISP. That would be easily the most difficult option, and with least guarantee of any improvement.

Which part?

[Srass]

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).

Consolidation...

[HockeyPuck]

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.

Re:Traditional telephones can die but FCC prevents

[radish]

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.