Customer-owned Networks: ZapMail & Telecoms 233
sasha writes "Here's a good article that describes how we, the consumers, can play the role of competitors to the vendors of products and services we buy. The author draws a parallel between FedEx's ZapMail failure and current situation with VoIP and WiFi in regard to the phone companies."
Fiber has replaced copper? (Score:5, Informative)
Tell that to the guys working at the thousands and thousands of wiring frames in telco central offices.
End-to-end optical wavelengths (Score:3, Informative)
Topology:
- a network of point-to-point "condominium" wavelengths
- condo owners can recursively partition their wavelengths
- wavelength owners determine topology and routing of their light paths
- massive edge peering, "star bursts" vs. "ring of rings"
- not "distributed network objects", but "distributed object networks"
Customer oriented end-to-end model:- customer owns infrastructure, carrier provides network management
- asset-based telecom allows customers to fund and control the network
- customer controls the bandwidth
Details:Re:Static IPs (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Static IPs (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So get up get, get get down, 911 is a joke in V (Score:5, Informative)
So there's really nothing stopping a city from contracting an emergency service from a company like Vontage - all that needs happen is someone like me codes the interface to it.
It is, however, unlikely. Agencies loathe change. They don't want to upgrade. Right now they're all pitching a fit because HP is phasing out the 3000 line over the next 10 years - they dont plan on buying new hardware before then. So I doubt we'd see any citys/counties signing a contract with a 'new kid on the block'
Heck, my company is only 20 years old and it takes a lot of shmoozing (and vaporware promises from marketing that I have to keep - grr) to get in the door. They'd rather shell out the big dollars to a company like Motorola for vastly inferior software and support, because they know Motorola will be there in 30 years when they decide to upgrade the system.
They're a decidedly technophobic bunch. You'd be surprised to see how many agencies in sizable cities still do their dispatching via cue cards and a bulletin board.
Re:Static IPs (Score:3, Informative)
If anyone's interested, I'll post the details, or a howto. (You'll need a linux box and perl, 'natch! :-)
ILECs vs LD carriers (Score:3, Informative)
First, the "big boys" you name are not the incumbent local exchanges, or ILECs, like SBC, BellSouth and Verizon. The article, written for the general reader, glosses over the difference between local and long-distance service, but its the ILECs who have the most to lose from Vonage et al, because the ILECs are the ones who make their money locking out competition and locking in service fees for things like Call Waiting that VoIP can do for free.
Second, the move from Column A (per-minute fees on a voice-optimized network) to Column B (voice as just another flat-rate app on an IP-based data network) is more than just bookkeeping, because you get to charge a lot less for apps in Column B. If all of ATTs LD revenues were to switch to VoIP style pricing tomorrow, they'd be out of business by the weekend.
-clay
A few FedEx details (Score:5, Informative)
- FedEx's 'fax machines' were 300x300dpi devices. This was important because a signed document could be sent that would still contain a legal signature. Keep a 1986 perspective on this (with very few fax machines anywhere during planning much less laser printer quality)
- A communications satellite was part of the network (so much for not owning the network as some have said). Problem is, it was on the Challenger. Not only was the satellite lost, so was the launch system for an indefinite period.
- The tax laws were scheduled to change in 1988 (?) to change that would reduce how much FedEx could write off in the case of a project cancellation. With no launch capability, it probably was reasonable to shutdown sooner rather than later and get the best writeoff possible.
- Lots of Tandem systems were purchased to support Zapmail. Most of these are still in operation in the FedEx network. Also, for a long time Zapmail hardware was used internally as copy machines... (oh, that old thing - its a Zapmail leftover...)
- FedEx hired a lot of IT people around the Zapmail time (mid 80's) and many are the old hands of today. By the way, FedEx laid off ZERO personnel when Zapmail was cancelled even though reported from 1500 to 2500 were involved. All were reassigned and a large number played significant IT roles later in the evolution of the FedEx network to what it is now. Many even referred to themselves as being 'Zapmailers'.
If a few things had gone differently, the project might of at least been launched and operational for a while. There's little doubt that the Zapmailers did not understand how much the common fax machine would spread, but what would have been launched would still be in its own 'league' even now.
Already Here (sort of) (Score:3, Informative)
The traditional telco, Telstra (still largely government owned), has hugely inflated prices for lesser services. The rival upstart company, Optus is usually more cost effective.
Optus is offering Voice-on-Cable for around $35AUD - approximately $17US - and throwing in 100 calls a month free. Now that's not quite following the service model proposed by the article, but it's close, and damn cheap.
You can get cable internet services + voice-on-cable for a combined fee of around $75AUD a month.
This is Optus's main strength - it's converging most of the major communications services into a single package - cable internet, cable TV and cable voice, at a price-point that is, if not cheap, then at least reasonable.
Phone number - Dynamic IP is the lookup (Score:3, Informative)
This is the ICQ model, where the IP address is treated as the temporary half of a permanent->temporary lookup table. This is one of the big wins for this version of VoIP.
-clay
Can you blame them? (Score:5, Informative)
We had this in Victoria (Australia) when ambulance dispatch was contracted out to Intergraph (who you may remember as a graphics card manufacturer). The inevitable teething problems occurred, a few people died, the government ended up in very hot water.
Jane Black article predated Shirky's (Score:5, Informative)
Let's give Ms. Black credit for coming up with the ZapMail analogy first. Shirky may have thought of it on his own, or he may have borrowed consciously or unconsciously from this earlier article.
Don't need Broadband or Static IPs (Score:2, Informative)
Why VOIP 911 Has Problems, and How To Fix Them (Score:3, Informative)
For VOIP, though, the way the phone call reaches the phone company is that somebody has a box that translates between phone lines (usually T1 trunks) and IP addresses, so the only thing the phone company knows is that it got a call from 202-456-2121, which terminates on a box in the basement at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. PBXs already cause some trouble with this, but they're often bright enough to know that the call is from extension 1234, and somebody can run a database that knows that x1234 is on the 12th floor. With VOIP, it's even worse - the VOIP-to-POTS gateway is some router or PBX that knows it got a connection from 10.32.11.1, and it's possible that somebody has a database that shows that that address belongs to a DHCP server on the 12th floor, not that the 911-police know how to find your data network management staff in a hurry, but in most of the VOIP standards, there's really no information beyond the IP address.
And of course your IP address might be anywhere in the world - did you dial in today from home, or a hotel, or an airplane, or your corporate office 3000 miles away? And think about the VOIP phones themselves - some people use telephone-oriented software applications on their PCs (it's 10.01.01.23 - do you know where your laptop is?), while other people use desktop VOIP phones from a variety of vendors, which you program to know that you're Linus Torvalds on +1-202-456-2121, and if you plug them in anywhere in your company's network, they'll find the gateway server, let it know your current IP address, and be ready to pick up your voicemail and incoming phone calls. Anywhere. So if you dial 911, the town your company's main office is in knows that there's an emergency somewhere near you, but it doesn't know where you are. And if you're not using a coporate VOIP system, you could really be almost anywhere. And if you're going through a NAT firewall or VPN gateway, you could be even farther anywhere.
So what kinds of approaches can people take to fix this? The two obvious first steps are either to get the phone company out of the way (give the 911 people VOIP so they can at least try to traceroute you, though that still has all the IP-vs-location uncertainties), or else to make sure that the VOIP standards are updated to do a better job of passing location information (for people who want to pass it) and that the VOIP-to-POTS gateway standards provide some mechanism for passing that along, whether it's starting the call with a 300-baud beepstream or using a separate internet or modem channel to pass on the VOIP as packets rather than translating to audio. That's still not enough - your laptop or portable voip phone only knows what you've told it, and unless GPS becomes much much cheaper, lower electric power, and better at working inside, it's can't use GPS to find out for itself.
Somebody could develop standards and implementations for some kind of where-am-I beacon, which probably would be better to run on a router but could be run on a PC, which you could program with your location, so a device can check with the net to get at least some advice about where it's located physically, though obviously that information could be misadministered or forged or just blinking 12:00. And if there's more than one of them that you can see, obviously you'd want some kind of decision-making process to find the closer one....
Then there's the whole privacy issue. Usually if you're making a 911 call, you probably want the police to be able to find you. But not always, and you certainly wouldn't want them to be able to find you when you haven't asked....
EXACTLY that idiot proof (Score:3, Informative)
-Em
Re:The article misses one BIG point (Score:2, Informative)
The Linksys EtherFast® Cable/DSL Voice Router is the perfect solution for connecting a small group of PCs to a high-speed broadband Internet connection or a 10/100 Ethernet backbone--and it features Voice Over IP telephone calls powered by Net2Phone. With the EtherFast® Cable/DSL Voice Router installed, no other special hardware is necessary for telephone calls. An ordinary telephone connects to the RJ-11 port (telephone jack) on the back of the EtherFast® Cable/DSL Voice Router, and calls are routed by Net2Phone's superior quality network to anywhere in the world--significantly reducing long distance charges.
Unfortunately, it appears you are locked into Net2Phone as your provider. Anyone have one of these?Re:What we need, is to get rid of the monopolies. (Score:1, Informative)
The US bears most of the cost for most of the technological innovation for the entire world. Other countries producing things at a commodity price is easy -- once those things are already commodities.
Countries without a copper telco infrastructure are going pure wireless. Not because they put in the R&D, but because the R&D is already done. The infrastructure can be bought at commodity prices and a wireless infrastructure is cheaper than one made from copper strings & trees.
Drug prices are the primo example. US consumers pay the cost and the rest of the world reaps the benefits. The marginal cost of making a bottle of pills is low, manufacturing the chemicals once you know which ones to make is cheap. Selling at a low price in a poor country makes sense, if you charged $1 more no one would buy it and you would make no profits. But once 1st world countries say your choices are sell at the government approved price (which is similar to the 3rd world price) or we will copy your invention and sell it at that price anyway, you are screwed. The cost of R&D isn't recouped and it isn't worthwhile to make the next useful drug.
Or more exactly, the countries that agree to pay the