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Is VoIP here to stay? According to
John Savageau's article “the train has left the station”. The
telephone companies are in trouble and they know it. To get on board
and find out more information on VoIP and compare top VoIP
providers, go to: VoIPChoices.com
Why VoIP is not Going to
Fail
By John
Savageau
VoIP is an almost constant topic in our daily
dose of business and tech-related news. VoIP, or Voice over
Internet/IP is really an old technology re-emerging with a new face
and marketing spin. In reality, we've been using VoiP for years,
just as the Internet community used email for years before it was
embraced by the business and consumer communities in the mid-1990s.
Whether you want to reference Voice over Internet or Voice over IP
protocol, at the most simple level it is merely a matter of
interfacing voice or audio input with a microphone device,
digitizing the input, slicing it into packets, sending it over an
Internet network to a destination address, reassembling packets at
the other end - voila! you have Voice over Internet or
IP.
Sound too simple? This is precisely what the
telephone industry does not want you to know. It is simple, so
simple a loosely knit group of people can slap together a bit of
code, call it Skype, and within 18 months sign up nearly 80 million
people around the world. And guess what? IT WORKS! Bet Time Warner
or Verizon Hawaii wishes they had that market clout!
Now, much like the Internet itself, the user
community is defining and writing the future of global voice
communications in the privacy of their own homes. Not in Palo Alto,
not in Bangalore - in simple bedrooms and informal hobby shops
scattered around the world. Hard to believe your next personal or
business communication system may be written and published by a high
school student in Uruguay.
Get this... Whatever lobbying telephone
companies may attempt in trying to prevent VoIP applications through
use of tactics such as E911 non-compliance, taxation, regulations,
etc., there may actually be no way for governments to ultimately
regulate VoIP. The only way for the phone companies and government
to ultimately control voice applications may be to simply shut down
the Internet. Otherwise there will be a new application born every
day which is designed to go around temporary blocks established by
companies wishing to filter VoIP from their networks. Why do I say
that?
Consider email. Many Post and
Telecommunication Administrations (PTAs) around the world initially
attempted to control use of email within their countries. Many
reasons were given, such as national security, infringing on the
rights of the state-owned monopoly post office, and a thousand other
reasons why email was not acceptable within the "special" situation
within an individual country.
The result? The community got creative and
bypassed their governments. Instead of accessing email from local
ISPs and email hosting providers - they simply got accounts on
Yahoo, Hotmail, or other freemail service and accessed email through
a public web browser located in a different country. The email
debate is no longer an issue. This will soon be the case with
VoIP.
Here is another interesting idea to consider.
In the case of email, now nearly any desktop computer can be
configured to serve as an email host - simple stuff, even for a
relative beginner. With public domain VoIP servers now on the street
such as "Asterisk" your next door neighbor high school student could
potentially be the next telephone company. So as soon as the
regulators start going after Vonage and the rest of the public VoIP
companies, another hundred free phone services ala Skype, compatible
and interoperable with a thousand other free phone services will
emerge.
A full understanding of the concept of
presence will further enlighten the masses on this approach. Just
think of the potential impact on traditional voice services if
Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and other instant messaging or presence service
providers with VoIP aspirations actually meet the growth expectation
telecommunications analysts! MSN's instant messenger claims to add
nearly 30,000 users each day!
So what can the average telephone company do
to defend themselves from VoIP? Probably nothing. The Voice over
Internet/IP "train has left the station." The best chance they have
is to concentrate on building physical networks, partner with one or
more VoIP and presence management companies, and resign themselves
to the position of a telecom infrastructure provider. A bit of
concentrated lobbying may delay VoIP diffusion within a geographic
location, but VoIP is a truly disruptive technology which will have
a major impact on the way we communicate in a global network and
society.
VoIP is in our future
John Savageau is the Senior Vice President,
Operations, at CRG-West. CRG-West operates major telecommunication
facilities such as the One Wilshire Building in Los Angeles and
Market Post Tower in San Jose. Contact John Savageau at savageau@pacific-tier.com
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