re: Enterprise VOIP: Not So FastComrades, Those of you who've read my occasional rant about VoIP on these boards over the past few years know that I've been a skeptic for a long time. But, as Daro mentioned, we've been dabbling with Skype recently and I was amazed at how effective and simple it really is. A friend of mine called me on Skype this morning using a dial-up Internet connection from his hotel room in Germany! The call was clear as a bell - a bit more delay that I'd heard on other Skype calls, but no worse than a lot of cellular calls I've experienced.
I haven't tried FWD or the other options, so I'm sure they're good too. But the PC-based phone approach has clearly got some rough edges. For example, it's be great to have a DECT (in-home wireless) handset or headset so I can continue the call while moving around.
It would be good if I could plug in my headset (I use an old voice recognition headset I bought ages ago) to the laptop, but the ringing noise would still come out of the speakers.
It would be good if there were more than 5 people I could talk to :-) But that will change I think.
I don't see Skype replacing my phone just yet. But I'll be making as many calls this way as I can, and will save a ton of money (both personally and for the company) in the process.
I can see now why Jeff Pulver has been so evangelical about this - you really need to try it in order to appreciate just how scared the incumbent voice operators should be :-)
re: Enterprise VOIP: Not So FastHi Lastmile, Was that "everybody listens" or "everybody laughs" :-)
There's no doubt in my mind that Skype, and I'm sure other "personal VoIP" packages, are revolutionary. But the darn thing is I still can't call my mum on Skype, or most of the friends we know. Having said that, word of mouth is the best advertising. I converted about a half dozen friends at a part we went to Saturday night. Most of them have relatives in foreign parts, or kids in college, etc.
So Skype is revolutionary within a subset of the calls we make. BT will still get my monthly line rental payment, but an ever-diminishing revenue from actual calls I would hope.
As I understand it, the voice quality of Skype is better than most, is that right? I'm stuck with ISDN until August (can't come soon enough), so I can't seem to get Instant Messenger "talk" features to work very well because of the bandwidth issue. But Skype works great over my poxy 64kbps B channel. Couple that with the ease of installation, and the fact that I didn't have to mess with my firewall, and it points to them getting a lot of things right.
re: Enterprise VOIP: Not So FastIt is a simple fact now that the replacement market for enterprise voice is the IP PBX. As enterprise TDM PBXs reach their end of life, they are being replaced by IP PBXs. The market share for IP PBXs is growing at double digit rates and fromthe numbers that I have heard will replace the existing TDM market by 2007.
Hosted PBXs and IP Centrex have one major problem. They are forms of Centrex which enterprise customers know and by knowing, hate.
They hate Centrx because of high prices for routine work, and minimal and out-of-date feature sets. The telcos have been proclaiming the rise of Centrex and the end of the PBX for decades. However in all that time Centrex has remained the uncompetitive service that it is.
re: Enterprise VOIP: Not So FastThey hate Centrx because of high prices for routine work, and minimal and out-of-date feature sets. The telcos have been proclaiming the rise of Centrex and the end of the PBX for decades. However in all that time Centrex has remained the uncompetitive service that it is.
Herein lies the rub which I think the article correctly addresses: where is the breaking point between internalizing and outsourcing tech infrastructure management? The line keeps moving as new technologies both simplify and complicate the task. And as the companies start small and grow to medium-sized and large companies.
How well the carriers compete in the IT outsourcing game will go a long way in determining their future shape, as VoIP becomes just another task for Information Systems groups.
re: Enterprise VOIP: Not So FastMuch of the positive press on parasitic VoIP comes from people who tried it and initially liked it. Hmmm, that reminds me of something. Ever hear a junkie talk about their experience? They tried it, they liked it, and the world didn't end right away. Then they were hooked; when the bottom did fall out, they were in real trouble.
Parasitic VoIP can work pretty well. But it's like an English car: Fun when it works, but don't count on it. Since there is no reserved bandwidth, the call gets through by the grace of the available bandwidth not being heavily utilized at that moment. So the test drive is great, but you may have second thoughts later. (In Skype's defense, though, the price is right.)
I visited a friend over the weekend who had tried Vonage. He had to drop it, because the other end couldn't hear him speak whenver he was uploading stuff from his computer. His complaint was about the cable modem network, naturally, for having too low an upstream cap. He didn't quite realize that packet discards are normal in IP networks. He had the newer Motorola adapter, which does voice priority, but that didn't do the trick.
Skype and Vonage and their ilk can give you a nice high, but they are not a good long-term way of life. At least not if you depend on them for reliable telephony. That kind of VoIP is, however, a good CB simulator or voice-chat system. It's useful for casual conversation, but probably not lifeline or business. PacketCable is a different animal altogether; it has reserved bandwidth (from DOCSIS 1.1+), so the voice and data are, effectively, separated below the IP layer. But of course cable ops aren't giving that away for free.
Not sure I like the English car analogy (probably 'cos it's true :-) , but I do agree with you.
I don't see Skype as a phone replacement. But actually it's fine for business calls - in some ways better and more conventient than a PSTN link because it's driven from the PC, so messaging is included, there's a contact list etc.
My future phone bills will keep the line rental component, but the amount for chargeable calls will drop dramatically I suspect. And that's bad news for my telephone provider.
re: Enterprise VOIP: Not So FastIGÇÖm not too sure about the drug analogy. Perhaps the residential VOIP we have now is a GÇ£gatewayGÇ¥ drug that introduces the opportunities that GÇ£harderGÇ¥ options offer, but itGÇÖs not quite hit dependency levels yet. (Then again, I could just be an addict in denial)
The key thing for me is that VOIP services like Skype will go someway to convincing the naysayers who have previously not given VOIP the time of day (I know of plenty already) These attitudes will filter through to business users, who will be more willing to pay for a VOIP service, especially as functions and features increase.
re: Enterprise VOIP: Not So Fastwho will be more willing to pay for a VOIP service, especially as functions and features increase.
My point of departure with some ofthe VoIP proponents is regarding the aspect that I have highlighted in this quote. As I see it true P2P is the only way to deploy VoIP. The service provider model will have distinct disadvantage over PSTN for a long time to come.
All the applications and services (including those mentioned in Msg. 7) can be realized in PSTN as well, if we grant computing power and display devices to the end-points. For example, Messaging and contact list is included in the telephone application that came with my Gateway computer.
re: Enterprise VOIP: Not So FastI'm sure that P-to-P VoIP will cost the telephone industry something, but "free" bandwidth is still more of an accounting trick than reality.
What's clear is that the telephone industry's 75-year-old "station to station" accounting technique is obsolete. (This dates back to the 1930 Smith v. Illinois Bell decision of the US Supreme Court, which held that local loops, being used for interstate calls, were partially under federal jurisdiction. Other countries found other means of using LD to subsidize local.) Designed to subsidize (non-luxury) local telephone service from (luxury) long distance revenues, it was useful for decades, helping promote "universal service", but got out of hand years ago. What parasitic (i.e., using bandwidth paid for for a different purpose, namely data) VoIP services provide is, in effect, "board to board" accounting for bandwidth. No contribution to the local loop. Which quite frankly is fine, if one accepts that Smith is obsolete or at least needs to be handled differently.
But the bandwidth is not free. It's a step function. You buy x bps of Internet service, and if you don't use it up, it's fine, but if it gets full, you need to buy a bigger pipe, at a much higher monthly price. Telephone service, on the other hand, is paid for by the call. More visibility, to be sure. But not all that different in practice. Remember WATS lines? Calls were "free", but telecom managers had to size up their WATS groups. The net per-minute rate was only a modest discount. (Been there, done that.)
The less that the subsidy system distorts things, the more accurately people will choose technologies on their merits. Right now VoIP benefits from arbitrage. It will still have a market without arbitrage, but remeber why Vonage shouldn't be pronounced VON-idj, but voh-NAZH. Even if they don't go along. ;-)
BTW, y'all, the FCC's VoIP Docket closes in a couple of weeks, and not many comments have been put on ECFS yet. (Look for "04-36".)
Those of you who've read my occasional rant about VoIP on these boards over the past few years know that I've been a skeptic for a long time. But, as Daro mentioned, we've been dabbling with Skype recently and I was amazed at how effective and simple it really is. A friend of mine called me on Skype this morning using a dial-up Internet connection from his hotel room in Germany! The call was clear as a bell - a bit more delay that I'd heard on other Skype calls, but no worse than a lot of cellular calls I've experienced.
I haven't tried FWD or the other options, so I'm sure they're good too. But the PC-based phone approach has clearly got some rough edges. For example, it's be great to have a DECT (in-home wireless) handset or headset so I can continue the call while moving around.
It would be good if I could plug in my headset (I use an old voice recognition headset I bought ages ago) to the laptop, but the ringing noise would still come out of the speakers.
It would be good if there were more than 5 people I could talk to :-) But that will change I think.
I don't see Skype replacing my phone just yet. But I'll be making as many calls this way as I can, and will save a ton of money (both personally and for the company) in the process.
I can see now why Jeff Pulver has been so evangelical about this - you really need to try it in order to appreciate just how scared the incumbent voice operators should be :-)
Cheers,
Geoff