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The Voice Over IP Insurrection 168

Posted by timothy from the heavy-voiceover dept.
Chris Holland writes "Daniel Berninger wrote the most informative article about Voice over IP I've ever read, over at Om Malik's blog. It outlines in great details the history behind the evolution of traditional communication technologies framed within the convergence of various Internet-related technological advances, and the challenges PSTN telcos are facing to hold-on to their shares of this lucrative pie. Beyond mere technological issues, Berninger offers great parallels and insights on past, current, and future governmental regulatory policies. A must read for anyone who's ever talked on the phone."
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The Voice Over IP Insurrection More

The Voice Over IP Insurrection

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  • Processor Speed (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:41PM (#10303108)
    The arrival of VoIP in 1995 corresponded with the arrival of a PC (i.e. Intel 486 processor) capable of managing the encode and decode processing in real-time.
    Er, the 486 arrived in about 1989. By '94, the x86 platform was on the Pentium Pro

    • Re:Processor Speed (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mOoZik ( 698544 )
      I think he means 586, i.e., Pentium.

    • Re:Processor Speed (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mshurpik ( 198339 )
      >POTS persisted for business reasons associated with monopolization of telecom and not technology or sound quality.

      The guy who wrote this article is failing to appreciate some of the technology goals of plain ol' telephone service (POTS). For example, reliability of telephone switches is in the multiple-nines percent uptime. Analog lines provide streaming without packet-loss, and the entire network is self-powered. All run over plain copper wire.

      In other words, the phone network has opted for simpli
    • When I was a poor student at the end of '93, I remember a 486 DX2/66 was barely affordable (roughly $1k, with a 14" monitor). And in '95 I remeber watching an intel promotional video from the release of the pentium -- talking about such things as running two processors in paralell so that if either produces an incorrect output the other catches it. And the DEC Alpha was a blazing 300MHz! But I digress...

      I'm not disputing your timeline, but for the average guy walking into a computer shop you would still
  • I had VoIP for about 3 weeks (early June to June 30) before I got too frustrated. It was down pretty frequently; not nearly as dependable as my AT&T line. I got an echo, and the sound quality never was as good as a phone. I just decided to stick to cellular access, and cancelled before I started another month of fees. I'm happy with AT&T.
    • That's not been my experience with VOIP. Just FYI. For me it's been superclear and at least as reliable as my normal phone. What service were you using?
      • Vonage (rhymes with "pwnage", or at least it should). They had decent tech support, but I think it was irreconcilable. I'll try out the new technology before I cancel the old, but recommendations said I didn't have to worry. My internet is kids of crappy so that may account for the downtimes.
        • <quote>See, I don't say "p'own-idge", I say "pawn-idge",because they're like little pawns compared to my incomparible leetness of being.</quote>

          Now if i could remember who really said that first....
        • I have a vonage line. Its got its plusses and it minuses. The major plus is that it gives me a New York City phone number despite the fact that I live in Israel. The major minus is its not real reliable. If my net connection goes down or I loose power i loose the US line. Now both of those things happen to me on a regular basis due to the fact that I live somewhere a bit remote. Also if we are downloading stuff it can kill the quality of the sound, since DSL here is has very limited upload speed.

          But the ha

      • Re:As someone who actually used it... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:56PM (#10303223)
        at least as reliable as my normal phone.

        You must have crappy phone service. I rely on a land line for my home alarm/fire system. Between cell, VoIP (which relies on my ISP), and land lines there is absolutely no contest when it comes to reliabilty. I have been using land lines for 30 years and can't remember an outage on a land line. As for my ISP and cell, I can't count the number of dropped calls or net outages.
    • thats what I always figured would happen.

      I have a few telco friends and work with the stuff myself from time to time. The rest of the time im a programmer. Anyhoo, I figure the phone system is a time proven technology, and the internet is too subject to viruses, worms, DOSs, and all of that.

      While Im sure a few here could provide a counterexample here or there, a telco hub doesn't get DOS'ed or wormed, in general. Even 'hacking' one a la 'captain crunch' doesnt generally bring down the system.

      Maybe in
    • Same here. I tried Freeworlddialup, which lets you call toll free POTS numbers for free. The sound quality and lag weren't as good as a regular phone. My friends on Vonage are pretty satisfied though, so maybe you get what you pay for. From what I've seen wireless is replacing landlines more than VoIP. With good signal at home my Verizon Wireless phone sounds as good as a landline and has never dropped a call at home. With bad or no signal it's useless.
    • Warning: Parent poster's signature contains a link to tub girl. Do not click.

    • Re:As someone who actually used it... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by angle_slam ( 623817 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @09:03PM (#10303953)
      I moved into a new apartment and the phone lines didn't work. The apartment complex swore up and down that it was SBC's problem to fix. So I call SBC and they swear up and down that it is the apartment complex's problem and they will do nothing about it.

      So I buy Vonage. No outages so far. Some echo problems, but that's rare. But many benefits--(1) virtual phone number in another area code; (2) use the internet to control voice mail and call forwarding (call forwarding never worked at my old apartment; (3) save about $20/month and still get unlimited calls.

  • used a phone? (Score:5, Funny)

    by AssProphet ( 757870 ) * on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:43PM (#10303121) Homepage Journal
    "A must read for anyone who's ever talked on the phone."

    WOAH! Crap, how did they know? *adjusts tinfoil hat*

  • Hyperbole Alert (Score:5, Funny)

    by cephyn ( 461066 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:43PM (#10303126) Homepage
    A must read for anyone who's ever talked on the phone

    Whoa, easy there tiger. Let's just say I find this to be the most ridiculous statement I've ever read. A must read for anyone who's ever had to do anything.

  • Informative article? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by timecop ( 16217 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:43PM (#10303129) Homepage
    Informative article?
    On a BLOG?
    Full of factual errors and void of any actual useful content?

    Nothing to see here, please move along.

    --
    Save the internet, append -inurl:blog to all google searches!
    • Just because something is on a blog doesn't make it bad by itself. There's so much junk on traditional media, too. Isn't that pretty obvious by now?

      The source is no guarantee as New York Times readers are painfully aware of. And while the signal to noise ratio on /. may not be particularly high, nonetheless there are some very well reasearched and/or thought out comments amongst all the junk, which in quality easily compete with or surpass anything in the traditional media.

      Let's judge each article (ne

      • There's so much junk on traditional media, too. Isn't that pretty obvious by now?

        Absolutely not. As long as the news is reported by a major traditional outlet like CBS and a veteran reporter like Dan Rather (or the rest of the crew on 60 Minutes) with decades of experience *interpreting* the news for us news *consumers*, I'll continue to believe it all.

  • Coral (Score:3, Informative)

    by TCM ( 130219 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:44PM (#10303133)
    Hope it helps. Coral link [nyud.net].

  • Well, (Score:5, Informative)

    by Freston Youseff ( 628628 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:45PM (#10303145) Homepage Journal
    I don't think much else needs to be said about VoIP. It's wonderful technology and saves a lot of money on telephone bills if you're well connected with broadband. I use VoIP quite a bit, so it's worth mentioning a top VoIP reference on the internet, in fact the most comprehensive info directory [ohio-state.edu] on the topic I know of. Also of interest is the FCC (keep the boos down please) webpage [fcc.gov] on it.
    • Will VoIP still work when the power is down? Will 911 still work? Will the operators at 911 know my location? As obsolete as landlines are, the do have one redeeming quality: they work reliably.
      • landlines aren't obsolete. Additionally they have far more than one redeeming quality.
      • First of all, your cell phone will work just fine even if your power is out. If the VOIP companies were clueful, they'd have somebody build them a VOIP router with a cell-phone circuit built in so you can make emergency calls.

        Of course VOIP and 911 don't get along - 911 was designed to work in a landline environment, with communications architectures tightly tied to Class 5 telco switches and database architectures designed for phones that stay in one place, and the 911 folks haven't been willing to adapt

        • You make a good point, but the problem is that the US is, once again, going to be left behind while the rest of the world moves on ahead and enjoys the benefits before the US... It still makes me laugh when I go to America and a street vendor tries to sell me a non-GSM phone :) If only they knew how it was in the UK (and indeed... Finland, where not having a mobile phone is grounds for termination - Arnie style!)

          Anyway, yes back to the point. VoIP is being marketed by BT as Broadband Voice. The UK's BIGGES

  • real voip issue: customer support (Score:4, Informative)

    by UnderAttack ( 311872 ) * on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:48PM (#10303160) Homepage
    I am currently using VoIP, mostly to save money. While the call quality is great, I think the real issue with VoIP is uptime and customer support. And I think the last issue is not accounted for when people talk about the potential savings from VoIP.

    I can't remember the last time I picked up a regular phone and didn't get a dial tone. For VoIP on the other side, I had a number of extended outages (maybe a total of 10 hrs this year so far). There is just so much more that can break with VoIP, which is out of the control for the VoIP company. As a result, VoIP customer support is always busy, and never able to help :-(

    • Perhaps the big savings is in the corporation side rather than on the individual customer side. Big corporations are also big spenders in the telephone business, and not so individuals. Often this corporations get special deals regarding support, sometimes in site.

      It could be that this is not yet prime time for home users in the VoIP arena.

      • I think to the contrary, business users are getting the short end of the stick.

        I work for a smallish company that sells phone systems - one of the larger changes I have tried (repeatedly and largly unsucessfully) to implement is expanding our product line to encompass more VOIP equipment (most of our leads are generated via the web so I want the buzzword if nothing else).

        The underlying issue is one of cost prohibitiveness and lack of quality. A phone system - a cheap one for say a company of 10, is g
    • I can't remember the last time I picked up a regular phone and didn't get a dial tone.

      Obviously you were never laid off for an extended period. Either that or the alcohol is starting to have its effect...

  • Skype (Score:3, Informative)

    by iMaple ( 769378 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:49PM (#10303173)
    Yes VoIP is huge, but p2p VoIP I think could even be bigger. I just started using Skype . If u thought that quality is a problem with VoIP then the Skype guys differ Here is waht they say in their FAQ

    What can I do when I experience bad sound quality?
    The PSTN (public switched telephone network) isn't as reliable as Skype-to-Skype calling. PSTN calls rely on traditional phone networks, which may have fluctuations in capacity and quality of termination. Please try your call again after some time.
    I tried it out just for the heck of it and the quality is pretty good ( I expected p2p quality to be quite bad). I guess the biggies could jump in soon . Lets see what happens with p2p VoIP
    • In order to receive the benefits provided by the Skype Software, you hereby grant permission for the Skype Software to utilize the processor and bandwidth of your computer for the limited purpose of facilitating the communication between other Skype Software users. You understand that the Skype Software will protect the privacy and integrity of your computer resources and communication and ensure the unobtrusive utilization of your computer resources to the greatest extent possible.

      Sigh, I thought it look
      • Ok, I rescind my previous post. Skype rocks. It works on my wife's Powerbook, my compatibility-crutch Win2k box, and my Gentoo Linux box.

        Maybe they make enough on the $0.02/min SkypeOut service to keep them from using my bandwidth and CPU cycles for illicit purposes. :)
  • they don't simply expand the pie. Let the PSTN system become broadband, let somebody else handle voice calling.

    • Re:I don't understand why (Score:4, Insightful)

      by KillerCow ( 213458 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:56PM (#10303230)
      I don't understand why they don't simply expand the pie. Let the PSTN system become broadband, let somebody else handle voice calling.

      Because change threatens existing business models.
      Who gets to lobby government? Existing businesses.

    • Re:I don't understand why (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cmowire ( 254489 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @08:02PM (#10303273) Homepage
      Because, you are requiring a company that has been making money for the past hundered years on the PSTN network suddenly drop everything and go towards something that may or may not actually make them money.

      Remember, the more VoIP comes out, the more able you are to write off your current provider. With VoIP, you can just have a cable modem or WiMAX service and no phone line at all. That's not good for the incumbent PSTN providers.
      • Thus, the obvious thing to do would be for the PSTN companies to be the ones rolling out the cable (on existing copper) and WiMAX service. There's always money to be made as the last-mile provider of information.

        • Re:I don't understand why (Score:5, Interesting)

          by cmowire ( 254489 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @08:31PM (#10303571) Homepage
          See, that's a meaningless platitude. Of course, there's always money to be made as a last-mile provider.

          The problem is, the ILECs (that's the technical term for the local phone company) aren't always allowed to roll out cable and WiMAX how they would like. Furthermore, if they did try to roll it out, they know very little about it, so it's not a guarantee that they'd end up losing the market anyway. Think of the online book market. Sure, the incumbent bookstores managed to have some web presence, but the real company that ended up as the online bookstore people tend to think about wasn't one of the incumbent providers.

          Or think about AOL Time Warner. Time Warner spent a bunch of money to pick up AOL and look where that's gotten them!

          The thing you need to remember is that VoIP has very little to do with where the ILECs want to go, and the article points this out. The phone company was dragged kicking-and-screaming into the Internet-DSL market mostly because they wanted to preserve their frame-relay/ISDN/Modem-line market and because the CLECs that they grudingly let into the market were using it. DSL wasn't even invented necessarily to do IP traffic, they wanted to be able to do streaming phone services with it.

          So, in the end, the phone companies are generally interested in the data-providers they compete with, not with innovation. If the phone company just provides bandwidth and no value-added services, that just means that the cable/WiMAX/etc. providers have won and they have lost.

          See, most people fall into the trap where they expect companies to act logically, as viewed by an external observer. And this is a logical fallicy, because they do act logically, but only when viewed as an insider.

          So, yes, it's very clear that the ultimate result *should* be two competing last-mile providers, representing pieces of the phone and cable companies respectively, plus wireless providers, plus companies offering layered phone, data, and video connectivity to your connection. But none of the incumbent providers with wire in the ground are interested at all in this, except to take out their competition.
    • "they don't simply expand the pie. Let the PSTN system become broadband, let somebody else handle voice calling."

      PSTNs are dead, they just don't know it yet. I've heard it said that WiMAX will do to DSL and cable what the cell phone is doing to POTS: The only people who will still be using the old technology will be the grandparents who don't know any better and the few remaining PSTN employees who don't have a choice.

      Interesting subject, this WiMAX. Not some "distant future" technology either; deploymen

  • The sad reality of regulation (Score:5, Informative)

    by drmerope ( 771119 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:51PM (#10303187)
    From the article: "... For the first two-thirds of the 20th century, AT&T had manned Berlin Wall separating telecommunications and computing, but eventually, these two enormous technology tracks would be unified."

    Sadly, this was not AT&T but the U.S. Justice Department which through a series of Consent Decrees required this harsh distinction.

    The Consent Decree of 1956 forbid AT&T from engaging in any business other than "common carrier communication services"

    Further restrictions appeared in the 1982 agreement.

    These restraints were not removed until congress and the FCC asked them to be removed after the passage the 1996 Telecom Act.
    • It also allowed other companies to connect to AT&T telephone networks which AT&T did not allow them to do before. This allowed much of the innovation in telecom that we now take for granted to take place. Perhaps not being allowed to get into the computer buisness wasn't so bad. After AT&T was allowed to get into the computer buisness they bought one of the largest and most respected PC buisnesses (I believe it was NCR's), and within a few years, managed to completely destroy it at a hugh finan

  • Packet8 (Score:3, Informative)

    by alatesystems ( 51331 ) <chris AT chrisbenard DOT net> on Monday September 20, 2004 @07:55PM (#10303220) Homepage Journal
    I don't know about other VoIP providers, but Packet8.net [packet8.net] has been great for me. I've had friends use the phone at my house and explain to them that they need to dial 1+area code+number and then when they get off the phone I tell them the call went over the internet.

    Usually, they are surprised that it wasn't a "real" phone conversation. I have sold a lot of people on it because it's only 20 bucks a month. I'm switching to BroadVoice [broadvoice.com] when they have area codes in my state, because they give you the SIP username/password so you can use Asterisk [asterisk.org] Linux PBX.

    Chris
    • Have you called/emailed Packet8 to ask them if they would provide you the SIP username/password? If you let them know that the reason you are going to leave is lack of access to this info you may find that they will be accomodating.
      • Actually yes, I have asked them for the sip username/password and informed them I would be switching as soon as this other provider offers service in my area. They declined, citing it was proprietary information.

        I didn't call explicitly for this purpose; it was on the same phone call as a tech support request because there was a problem with the exchange. My parents were unable to call me, and they had that problem fixed in 12 hours.

        Chris
        • Try a sales droid/manager or customer retention department if they have one. It costs companies a LOT of money to get new customers so if there is something cheap/free they can do to retain one they often will. If you are really happy with the service it might be worth it to spend 30 minutes or less on the phone trying to get satisfaction. I got double peak airtime minutes and free nights and weekends just by calling AT&T customer retention and telling them I was switching to Verizon if they couldn't ge

    • Re:Packet8 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by whoever57 ( 658626 )
      I don't know about other VoIP providers, but Packet8.net has been great for me.

      I have also tried using Packet8. While I agree that calls to US numbers are great, calls to India are abysmal. Packet8's quality for calls to India is so bad that it is virtually unusable.

      • For what it's worth, my calls to South Korea were amazingly great. They only cost me $0.03 a minute too.

        Chris

      • Re:Packet8 (Score:2, Informative)

        by freqres ( 638820 )
        I don't think it's Packet8's fault. All my tech support calls that get routed to India are abysmal and they are over a POTS line ;-).
        • I don't think it's Packet8's fault. All my tech support calls that get routed to India are abysmal and they are over a POTS line ;-).

          I make lots of POTS calls to India. Packet8's quality is far worse than POTS for calls to India.

  • England is so backwards that you still have to pay for local calls. Does calling England cost more?

    I've been to China and they don't even have that, what's up with that? How can you create a socialist paradise without free communication.
    • s/England/New York City/

      That's right, one of the biggest cities in the world, and Verizon charges us all for local phone access. Wish I was raking in those fees...

    • Or rather BT have finally caught up.

      For domestic customers, BT Together [bt.com] offers free *national* calls for £16.50 (~$29.50) per month (off peak) or £25.50 (~$45.80) per month (any time of day).

      I dunno how this compares to the US for pricing (I suspect you're going to tell me we're being ripped off :-) but it's a step in the right direction.

      Of course, you're always free to stick with metered calls and cable operators will usually let you call their own phone networks for free (not that I'd ev

  • A must read for anyone who's ever talked on the phone....

    As one who was recently laid off from a telcom after 21 years of service, I would recommend this also as a must-read for any who work for a telcom (and there are many who do who aren't aware of how present VOIP is).

    • Yeah, it's something to worry about. I also work for a major Telco ( SBC ) and VOIP is only the tip of the iceberg.

      The super initiative right now is Fiber-to-the-premise. It will carry everything. Phone, data, your internet, TV, alarm, etc. etc. I forget the bandwidth specs on it at the moment, but I recall being somewhat impressed by it.

      The only oddity I recall about it was the demarc installation comes with a mandatory UPS system to handle things in the event of a power failure. I believe it

      • Fine. I'll believe it when I see it.

        In the meantime, point out that if they really want it to grow, they need to cut out the rules. They are just there to maintain the pricing structure, which is really a major ripoff for the user. Make the charges truly relate to the costs (ex: 3WC), allow anyone to run servers (it's their own fault if they don't secure them properly, if they fail to do so, you cut them off until they can demonstrate they are not a zombie), and provide decent upstream bandwidth at a rea

  • the only negative experience I've had with voip is that when you are downloading large files or heavy webpages the voices tend to distort a bit.

  • full text of article (Score:4, Informative)

    by master0ne ( 655374 ) <emberingdeadN05P4M@NoSPAM.gmail.com> on Monday September 20, 2004 @08:07PM (#10303321)
    The Voice over IP Insurrection

    Daniel Berninger, an old friend, a seriously smart guy and VoIP guru of sorts, and more recently senior analyst, for Tier1 Research, has been a great man to bounce ideas off. He and I have chatted about many things, and each time I come away learning something new. So last week he argued, "in the battle between Bellheads and Netheads, we're all Netheads now." Could not agree more. Here is his long missive on the VoIP insurrection, the best and most definitive essay you will ever read on this technology, where it is headed and why it is important. This is the second of my guest columns series where I bring the experts who know a thing or two about their respective areas of expertise.

    What just happened?

    The $3 billion dollar budget at Bell Laboratories did not include a single project addressing the use of data networks to transport voice when VocalTec Communications released InternetPhone in February 1995. As of 2004, every project at the post-divestiture AT&T Labs and Lucent Technologies Bell Labs reflects the reality of voice over Internet Protocol. Every major incumbent carrier, and the largest cable television providers, in the United States has announced a VoIP program. And even as some upstart carriers have used VoIP to lower telephony prices dramatically, even more radical innovators threaten to lower the cost of a phone call to zero--to make it free.

    The VoIP insurrection over the last decade marks a milestone in communication history no less dramatic than the arrival of the telephone in 1876. We know data networks and packetized voice will displace the long standing pre-1995 world rooted in Alexander Graham Bell's invention. It remains uncertain whether telecom's incumbent carriers and equipment makers will continue to dominate or even survive as the information technology industry absorbs voice as a simple application of the Internet.

    The roots of the VoIP insurrection trace back to four synchronistic events in 1968. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled MCI could compete with AT&T using microwave transport on the Chicago to St. Louis route. The same year, the FCC's Carterfone decision forced AT&T to allow customers to attach non-Western Electric equipment, such as new telephones, and modems, to the telephone network. The Department of Defense's Advanced Research Project Agency issued a contract to Bolt Beranek and Newman for a precursor to the Internet. And in July 1968, Andrew Grove and Gordon Moore founded Intel. Innovation in the communication sector remained the proprietary right of AT&T for most the 20th century, but events in 1968 breached the barriers that kept the telecom and information technology industries apart. For the first two-thirds of the 20th century, AT&T had manned Berlin Wall separating telecommunications and computing, but eventually, these two enormous technology tracks would be unified.

    Two entrepreneurs barely out of their teens, Lior Haramaty and Alon Cohen, founded VocalTec Communications in 1993 based on the promise of packet voice technology they observed as members of the Israel Defense Force. Most military command and control used the highly survivable TCP/IP distributed data networks since the 1980's. The challenge of transporting voice over the networks arose as an imperative to support certain very sensitive voice commands like "drop the bomb", but the idea of commercializing packet voice did not occur to anyone until the arrival of Lior and Alon. How could slicing voice into 50 millisecond packets improve the telephone business? The tradition bound telephone industry types or "bellheads" spent their time before 1995 improving the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) not replacing it.

    Advances in communication from writing and paper to the printing press, telegraph, and telephone shape human progress. Some might have viewed VoIP as an interesting toy in 1995, but no one presently doubts it will dominate the communication future. The economies of scale assoc
  • Try http://www.skype.org/ -> Free internet telephony.

    My experience is that the quality is better than an average cell phone call but not quite as 'comfortable' as a traditional phone to the ear.

    This mode of communication will become much more popular once a major IM service incorporates it (which cannot be done unless the skype developers decide to allow this)
    • The Linspire gang are attempting to merge their vision (PhoneGaim [sipphone.com]) into the main Gaim branch. Looks like progress has been slow though...

      PhoneGaim is also supposed to be better because it's Open Source, with an open network, something that Robertson has said is what would keep Skype from merging with Gaim or some such.

  • Slashdot needs to get the lead out (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <deliverance@level4 . o rg> on Monday September 20, 2004 @08:09PM (#10303345) Journal
    And find a review of all the VOIP tech's so we can all get on the same network.

    Heck there are open souce versions for linux already.

    Every second we delay the phone companies are fixing to make something that should be free cost money.

    And this is a perfect app to include in linux distros.

    • Re:Slashdot needs to get the lead out (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      At the risk of saying something that has been said before, I use www.freeworlddialup.com as my VoIP provider. Not only is it a free resource to do VoIP to VoIP calling, but it has several links to many "gateway providers." Check it out, I've been quite happy with the quality!

  • All-in-one is buggered. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sfled ( 231432 ) <sfled AT yahoo DOT com> on Monday September 20, 2004 @08:11PM (#10303361) Journal
    When it breaks, it's all-in-none.

    My printer is my printer. My scanner is my scanner. My fax machine is my fax machine.

    If my printer breaks I can still scan; if my scanner breaks I can still fax; If the fax breaks, my printer doesn't care.

    My phone line is my phone line. My mobile line is my mobile line.

    My ISP line is also unfortunately my CATV. The CATV line is dependent on the electric utility (line amplifiers have batteries that last only a few hours).

    I will be switching to ADSL soon. Why? because during the last hurricane, the phone never went out. I lost electric & CATV...no power, no TV, no internet.

    All-in-one is buggered. Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong; I often am.

  • Slow innovation - triggered by monopoly rules (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cant_get_a_good_nick ( 172131 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @08:11PM (#10303363)
    I was reading this, it seems vaguely anti-corporate tinfoil hat-ish (not that I'm a big fan of corporations, but there are so many evil things they do, why waste time beating them up for stuff they don't?)

    It keeps on going on with connotations of evil monopolists squashing the guys in the garages like bugs as being the only reasons it's moved slow. Part of the reason is that you want stability in public utilities. Innovation breeds incompatibilites. If I wanted to, I could buy a 1950's rotary phone from eBay and plug it in and still use it (in the movie Cellular [imdb.com] Kim basinger takes advantage that teh network still can use the old "micro-disconnect" signals that rotary pulses were). For overclocking, fastest GPU of the week fanboys that may seem quaint, like using MicroChannel on a 386, but to most people the phone just works. The government actually discouraged innovation by capping profit margins. As a regulated monopoly, the phone company was capped to a certain net profit. New business or old, same profit margin. This discouraged innovation, but encouraged stability. Not so much evil as the upside/downside to a decision that is more complex than people would like to think. I'm not sure if they are currently so capped, there's so much breakup and consolidation since the old Ma Bell days, some of the compatibility is probably gone as well.

  • Hype (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jav1231 ( 539129 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @08:23PM (#10303457)
    VoIP is hyped to death. Literally. It's hard to peddle something that someone already has, phone service. I remember NetWorld Interop in like 94 or 95. VoIP was going to be so big, I wouldn't be able to take crap without VoIP processing it somehow. 10 years later, it's in almost exactly the same state it was in then.

    • Re:Hype (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zentec ( 204030 ) <zentec @ g m ail.com> on Monday September 20, 2004 @08:44PM (#10303732)
      You're absolutely right, it's about in the same state it was in 1995. But only because the cost of broadband didn't make it feasible.

      But now that broadband is cheap, it's starting to make a lot of sense, especially with companies that have large WANS full of bandwidth. The company I work for has 100 megabits of fiber connected between 8 locations through a company called Telco. They're paying $10,000 per month for the fiber and since the satellite offices need to call corporate a lot, VOIP on our own bandwidth saves thousands on phone bills per month.

      Cheap broadband for the residential user makes VOIP a possibility too. I ditched my landline last month and ported the number to my wife's cell phone. The phone in the house is Voicepulse and it's been as reliable or better than the Verizon POTS. You can't tell the difference in call quality.

      Six years ago, my local telephone bill was $22 per month with caller-id. My last POTS bill was close to $60. Really, all telcom reform has done for me is drive up my bill to outrageous amounts.

      The incumbent telephone companies all have their own VOIP service. Problem is, they think that VOIP is reason enough to switch and they offer paltry savings on VOIP as compared to POTS; if there's any savings at ALL. Verizon's VOIP service was $40 per month and I was paying close to $60 with just caller-id. Somehow they think that phone service should guarantee them a fixed amount of revenue. VOIP offers the very real chance at local telephone competition without requiring new players to build their own networks or rent from the incumbents.

      In fact, this has been the whole impediment to local phone competition. The incumbents have for years resisted renting out their networks to competitors. They've tried legislation and regulations to make it cost prohibitive and have pretty much succeeded while giving themselves a paltry profit line in interstate and intrastate access fees.

      The gig is up; everyone stands to save money if they don't use the traditional telephone network.

  • But many communications companies also provide cable television and phone service as well as Internet access. Plus they mostly own the copper and fiber which would be needed for VOIP. There's a conflict of interests here which is partly the reason Moore's law is not readily apparent in Internet bandwidth.

    Why would Verizon, for example, provide customers with the infrastructure for free VOIP and television over IP when they'd be slicing into their own revenue source?

    We can all be reminded of just how much

    • Why would Verizon, for example, provide customers with the infrastructure for free VOIP and television over IP when they'd be slicing into their own revenue source?

      Because Vonage and the other VoIP providers already are slicing into their revenue source with low-cost VoIP. Verizon and the other RBOCs are already hemorrhaging customers and this is an effort to try and keep some of them. Remember most money in the utilities business is made by charging companies "business rates" which subsidize home/personal


      • I hope you're right but there's no competition. If you live in California you have to deal with SBC, if you live in New York it's Verizon.

        These comapnies are sitting on a lot of money and spending almost zit on R&D. Notice the marketing self-propagting junk you get with your phone bill. I get visa applications and frequent flyer offers with mine. Why in the name of progress is a phone involed with a credit lender and an airline company?

        They'll sell me a lousy T1 for $800/month when it should be
    • We can all be reminded of just how much these companies reap from the public when we consider Verizon's recent $60B bid to buy Disney.

      Ummm... Wasn't that Comcast that wanted to buy Disney?

  • I stopped reading the moment he called Voice over IP the greatest invention since the telephone. It's not. I don't care how learned you are, I don't care how much you know about your own field, when you make comparisons like that you are a fool and I will not listen to you. Voice over IP is a product of the Telephone. It currently runs over telephone networks (IP does). In fact it's an abstraction of the telephone. You take the telephone, then you shove data down it, and in that data you encode voice inform

    • Re:Fanatic (Score:3, Insightful)

      by erikharrison ( 633719 )
      Actually, you should have kept reading. For one, hyperbole is standard in this kind of literature.

      Two, he makes the argument (quite well, I think) that other than providing a similar kind of service there isn't any similarity between POTS technology and VoIP. He points out that PSTN is an almost intentionally neutered technology, and VoIp isn't.

      You sayd VoIP should have been done a long time ago - duh! We've established you didn't read the article, so of course you missed the reasons why VoIP is growing a

  • Funny observations from making the switch... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ssummer ( 533461 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @09:24PM (#10304138)
    I *was* a Verizon customer for POTS and DSL. I was spending approx $22/month for their cheapest plan ("message-rate" where I pay $.09 per outgoing call with NO calling features) just so I could get the damn DSL ($35/month). I averaged about 5 outgoing calls a month.

    This prompted me to recently switch to Cablevision (Optimum) for their $90/month package deal of basic digital cable, cable modem service and VOIP (unlimited local/long distance with all the premium calling features).

    When I called Verizon to disconnect my phone service, of course the CSR asked me why and I told her because of VOIP. She then proceeded to ask me if Cablevision explained to me about not getting "911" or "0" service, that I couldn't make a call if the power is out, and that since my calls are "going over the internet" it was "less secure" than a regular line. I mockingly replied "Hell yeah!".

    I sure hope she does as good a job FUD'ing her own company's VoiceWing service as she did for Cablevision.

    On "installation" day, the Cablevision guy couldn't get the VOIP part working. So he calls local support and after being put on hold for 15mins while the tech "looked into it", the tech returns with the brilliant suggestion of trying a new modem. After trying two different Motorola VOIP cable modems with no success and another 10mins on hold the tech transfers him to the national support center. He waits another 15mins on hold to be connected to a "national" tech just to be told by the tech that "field guys" can't talk directly to the national tech guys and that only the local techs can talk to the national techs then *CLICK*. He then calls local support again, where finally a different tech tells him that VOIP has been down for 1hr and doesn't know when it will be back up.

    Total time for cable modem and cable TV setup (including running wires, etc.) = 30min. Total VOIP setup time = 90min. (and it still wasn't working when the cable guy left). Finally about an hour later the service came back up.

    Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Take your pick. Either way you lose and it ain't even election day yet...

  • Disruptive Technology (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mazzaroth ( 519229 ) on Monday September 20, 2004 @09:55PM (#10304351) Homepage
    Within five years, the telco world will have changed.

    We will observe a strong fragmentation of the telecommunications world as many small companies will try to get their share of this multi-bilion dollars market. And just because of the low entry cost (look at asterisk [asterisk.org], Convedia [convedia.com], Ubiquity [ubiquitysoftware.com], Appium [appium.com], and many other players way too numerous to list here), you don't have to be a huge company to deliver services in that emerging market of VoIP services (here, by VoIP services, I don't only mean providers, but also secondary services like voice recognition, IVRs, vertical markets services, unified messaging, value-added access resellers, etc.). Maybe after, the market will reconsolidate though.

    VoIP is to telco what PC was to computing, what the Amiga Video Toaster was to TV productions, what Napster was to RIAA, what iPod was to MP3 music, what Internet was to information access, what Word, Excel and Powerpoint was to corporations, ... It's a disruptive technology.

    It's a fact; those who can't adapt to their changing environment will disappear. And new dominant players will take their place in a new order...

    I wonder what my phone (ok, communication device) will look like and will allow me to do in 5 to 10 years from now.

  • PGPhone (Score:3, Informative)

    by Performaman ( 735106 ) <PeterjonesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday September 20, 2004 @10:58PM (#10304722)
    It's been out since about '95 or '96, is totally free and can work over TCP/IP or direct dial. And it encrypts your communications.
    Here's the download page: http://web.mit.edu/network/pgpfone/pgpfone-form.ht ml
  • An acquaintance of mine just discovered that his required home router firmware upgrade hosed his VOIP modem interface.

    He is hisown telco customer support function. Is that the job we really to have? Is that where we see the phone company's general level of service heading?
  • Google franchised public WiFi access points called...

    Wait for it...

    GSpots

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