Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
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 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.)
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)
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.
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.
traditional telephony companies need to adapt or die ... in order to remain viable.
Dying to remain viable. Gotta buy me some of that stock.
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!?"
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?
What is a SPITstorm?
Google on spitstorm and voip returns nothing, not a single hit.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Congratulations. You have discovered one of the main differences between packet-switched networks and circuit-switched networks.
It's not impossible to get good-quality audio in a packet-switched network, but TCP/IP doesn't really include the features that are needed to do it right. (And that's by design, too -- it makes many things much simpler. For instance, it makes routing simpler because you can change around the topology of the network while connections are still established.)
TCP/IP is optimized for bulk data transfers and getting the most efficient utilization out of your equipment, which is a different goal than reliable, real-time transfers. That's why voice over IP is cheap but not always the greatest quality. It is, fundamentally, a hack. Yes, there are tricks that make it work better, but it is still basically a hack at its core. (Note that I'm talking about doing VoIP over your broadband connection, as opposed to solutions that business use, where they have full control over the network.)
Don't get me wrong -- I think the ILECs (traditional phone companies) are a bunch of lazy, aging, greedy bastards who'd love to have their monopolies preserved and will probably fight dirty to make it happen. But they do have a pretty good network in place, and they've had many decades to refine it, and it works well, and there are never dropouts during a conversation due to network congestion. (Yes, sometimes it's not possible to place a call because "all circuits are busy", but once you place one, if the equipment isn't damaged, then the quality is virtually flawless 99.999% of the time.)
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.
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
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...
Nope, I work for a company that does almost exactly what the parent said.. Remember, this is VoIP, the voice traffic is all IP data packets going into the router. All 24 timeslots on the T1 are allocated to data. The cisco/adtran router filters out the incomming voice traffic packets (which are addressed to the router itself anyway), processes them via onboard DSPs that connect to FXS/CAS/PRI voice cards to talk directly to the existing office/home phone systems (or passes the SIP stuff on to the lan to connect to IP phone systems), and does it all in reverse for outbound (injects the packets back into the T1 addressed for the central callswitch, or SIP phone). The bandwidth is "dynamically allocated" in the sense that voice packets share all the same channel space/timeslots on the T1 as your internet data, but voice has higher priority via QOS, so the fewer calls you have, the more bandwidth, no rechannelizing T1's necessary.
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
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.
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.
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
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"
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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