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VOIP, The Traditional Telephony Killer?

Posted by timothy on Mon Jul 04, 2005 08:29 PM
from the alki-alki dept.
Communications Businesses IT
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."
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  • Internet Telephony (Score:3, Funny)

    by gsonic (885510) on Monday July 04 2005, @08:31PM (#12982370)
    I wonder when we'll get error404s and telephone spyware when phoning.
      • I wouldn't be quite so quick to say that. I thought that about Cell phones back when they were big clunky grey bricks, but now I have two; a bigger, clunkier grey brick (with a PDA), and a small, thin black one I carry around for it's superior battery life.

        Just wait and see, you might not even notice it; telephones might look identical to the way they look now, except containing tiny computers with IP stacks and an IP address list. You won't even know the difference.
      • I know a lot of people with unreliable computers. But that doesn't mean I'll never get a computer...
      • I don't see a problem as long as there is backup... I don't recall ever losing our phone line at work, I do recall many times losing internet. There are many times in business when an hour of not being able to use the phone could cost more than the savings from VOIP over a decade....

        Yeah, that's kinda where I am on the subject. PLUS...There are lots of things in our infrastructure that REQUIRE a phone line and are too important to leave up to VOIP right now. Security systems come to mind.

        I really

  • Cellphones (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Shudnt traditional telephone companies be more afraid of cellphones than VOIP?
    • Nah, most traditional phone companies have money invested into the cell networks. Those that don't have money invested in information infrastructure, so either way, those companies win.

      Where they don't have money invested is VoIP, so of course they're going to try to bury it at all stops due to 911 laws and such.

      While I'm not arguing the unimportance of 911, I'm arguing the fact that phone companies have a lot more to lose by letting VoIP go through, having no financial stakes in it.

      • Re:Cellphones (Score:5, Informative)

        by Reaperducer (871695) on Monday July 04 2005, @09:23PM (#12982567) Homepage
        Where they don't have money invested is VoIP

        Really? That's the exact opposite of everything I've read, especially when it comes to AT&T. I've read a few articles about how some surprisingly large percentage of their traffic is VoIP, and they only intend to expand further in this category.

        Maybe the big names don't provide VoIP into residential homes where you see a brand name on a bill each month, but from what I've read, they're providing it to a lot of businesses, and do the infrastructure for some of the residential providers.

        Anyone with better insight is encouraged to post references, since I don't have anything better than my scattered memory.

  • Traditional telephones can die but FCC prevents it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2005, @08:33PM (#12982374)
    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.

    • Re:Traditional telephones can die but FCC prevents (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ciroknight (601098) on Monday July 04 2005, @08:42PM (#12982401)
      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.

      • 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 fin

      • Disclaimer: I work for a telecom company, but this is my personal opinion only, except on the rare occasions when they have the good sense to take my advice. The question isn't whether somebody's going to eat our lunch - it's just who, and whether we're going to help them. Moore's Law has been trashing the whole computer industry's infrastructure for years; why should the telcos be any different, just because we used to be able to design for 40-year equipment lifetimes instead of 4-year?

        VOIP could repl

  • Not if (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hsmith (818216) on Monday July 04 2005, @08:36PM (#12982383)
    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!
  • I have been using iConnectHere [iconnecthere.com], which is very affordable, but I have problems with not being able to connect, and problems with audio make it impossible to hear the person on the other end. Other times, it works fine though. Perhaps they have too many users?

    • Re:Problems with iConnectHere (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tftp (111690) on Monday July 04 2005, @08:51PM (#12982438) Homepage
      I used to have an iConnectHere account, and they indeed had connection problems from time to time. But the killer problem was not that, it was bad audio, and that can't be easily fixed.

      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.

      • Internal versus internet (Score:4, Informative)

        by kingdon (220100) on Monday July 04 2005, @10:16PM (#12982748) Homepage
        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.
    • I have been using iConnectHere, which is very affordable, but I have problems with not being able to connect
      So not a very apt name then, no? Maybe iDontConnect.

  • VoIP not a small business solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by toddbu (748790) on Monday July 04 2005, @08:40PM (#12982393)
    Small business lives and dies by its reputation, and the poor call quality of VoIP can really impact customer perception of a business. After using a VoIP solution for a full year, we dumped it in favor of copper. I know that I didn't like having to try to figure out what my customer was saying, and I'm sure that they felt the same way about me.

    VoIP for personal use - yes. VoIP for small business - not ready for prime time.

    • Re:VoIP not a small business solution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kebes (861706) on Monday July 04 2005, @08:56PM (#12982455) Journal
      I think you might be over-stating the quality difference of VoIP. My VoIP phone is nearly indistinguishable from a normal landline, and I'm sure if I had a business-class internet connection, it would be even better.

      You're absolutely right that reputation, and hence ease of phone conversations is important to small businesses. However, one should also consider the fact that VoIP gives a small business the ability to do things they would never consider otherwise. For instance, you could expand into markets in other regions, and not be worried about the innumerable number of long-distance phone calls that this would entail (calling other vendors, distributors, etc. that are not local). So I feel like VoIP may give the opportunity for a small business to "act" like a bigger business, making long-distance phone calls without worries. Depending on the business, this could be a major cost savings.

      I think it's a viable option, and more importantly (as TFA sorta points out) as the technology gets better, the advantages of VoIP will mount (whereas the cost should remain low)...

      Of course, IANASBO (I Am Not A Small Business Owner), so I might be off-base here.

    • Re:VoIP not a small business solution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by killjoe (766577) on Monday July 04 2005, @08:57PM (#12982459)
      Wow that's amazing, I can't even begin to count the number of times I have had all kinds of bad quality calls from cellphones and yet I have never dropped a vendor or lost a client because of them.

      You must be working with some the of the pickiest most anal customers on the planet.
    • 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
  • We have a lot of power outages around these parts. I kind of like how my telephone works even if I want my telephone tied to my Internet which is tied to my power. I suppose I could get a UPS for my cable modem and phone, but is that really optimal? Any battery source eventually dies.

    I was just thinking to myself today that it sucks that my cordless phone doesn't work when the power goes out.

    For me, power outages are a minor annoyance. But for companies? How can they deal with virtually all lines to
    • Well, wouldn't a wireless system stay just as powered as a wired solution? Power is maintained by generators and such for the telephony system (remember, those are electrical too, you know). Do the same for the wireless locales and it'll do the same. The reciever end can be crank powered if absolutely nessicary, but I think a good charged battery is always the better convenience.

      There's really not much stopping us from dropping old telephone lines and VHF/UHF tv, but much of America is afraid of change s
      • wouldn't a wireless system stay just as powered as a wired solution?

        If you are talking about the cellular network, then all base stations, on all poles, masts and roofs, must be equipped with generators; that's tens of thousands of them. Compare that to a single switching center which services tens of thousands of customers. Such a center can afford to have one really good generator, and some batteries, and service for them.

  • I lease a T1 for voice and data. The line is run trhough an ADtran voice/data router on my premises. To my phone system everything looks like POTS but in actuallity its all voice over ip with bandwith being dynamically allocated as neccesesary. I know this is becoming very popular in my area because it drobs the cost of a full service business line from about 60/month net to about 40/month net and it allows for t1 data access at about 300/month.
    • I really hope that you paid Mr Stoller [slashdot.org] to use *his* word in your subject line. If not, you should be expecting a call real soon from his lawyers.

      • Re:Theres always stealth VOIP (Score:5, Informative)

        by Tmack (593755) on Monday July 04 2005, @09:37PM (#12982618) Homepage Journal
        T1 does offer guaranteed latency, and indeed you can allocate time slots as needed. If that's how the router works, then you don't have VoIP because there is no IP involved; IP for your Net access runs in free time slots, in parallel to the synchronous virtual circuit that is carrying the voice.

        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

  • Not in my neck of the woods (Score:5, Informative)

    by PuddleBoy (544111) on Monday July 04 2005, @08:46PM (#12982416)
    "23% of small-to-medium-sized businesses have already implemented VOIP technology"

    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.)

  • The 23% of small business probably were never Avaya/Nortel/{favorite} PBX customers to begin with. All the big vendors for large to enterprise size customers have offered Voice Over IP for years on separated networks protecting them from SPIT and VOMIT. Busineses will adopt VOIP at the same rate they adopted digital sets. That is, when it is time for an infrastructure change. Most companies with older digital sets have some remote workers with VOIP already through ISDN lines or remote sourced IP connectivit
    • All the big vendors for large to enterprise size customers have offered Voice Over IP for years on separated networks protecting them from SPIT and VOMIT.
      SPIT and VOMIT, eh? Sounds like a great Verizon or other POTS company advertisement. Who would still have trouble resisting the low cost of VoIP once they learn it will cause them to be spat and/or vomitted upon?
  • 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. :)
  • 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
    • Wait, wouldn't that mean that ISPs could be then considered a "telecommunication" system and be subject to taxable double jepoardy? I don't think I'm the only one who sees that happening, and thus Big Boy Long Distance is probably going to fight tooth and nail against VoIP as they already have with 911 laws and such.

      Hopefully what will happen is someone at the FCC will wake up out of their pile of old papers and dust and realize what's happening around them. The old POTS system is getting phased out by c

  • Creative business plan (Score:5, Funny)

    by SquareOfS (578820) on Monday July 04 2005, @08:56PM (#12982456)
    traditional telephony companies need to adapt or die ... in order to remain viable.
    Dying to remain viable. Gotta buy me some of that stock.

  • Hehe :) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mac Degger (576336) on Monday July 04 2005, @09:04PM (#12982496) Journal
    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.

    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 :P

  • What is a SPITstorm? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jah-Wren Ryel (80510) on Monday July 04 2005, @09:07PM (#12982512)
    What is a SPITstorm?

    Google on spitstorm and voip returns nothing, not a single hit.

    • Re:What is a SPITstorm? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dacarr (562277) on Monday July 04 2005, @09:25PM (#12982572) Homepage Journal
      SPam over Internet Telephony. It's the second to last entry on it over on Everything2 [everything2.com].
    • SPam over Internet Telephony ... storm ..

      I fail to see how this is relevant though. Using VoIP can mean many different things. For example, a business can use VoIP to link their phone system between branch offices, and use it to make free calls between them. This is as opposed to getting point-to-point links (like T1s) between the buildings, where you pay the telco loop fees, usage fees, etc.

      A business can use VoIP to make long distance calls, usually at a fraction the price of even the CLEC long distance
        • Really Cheap Global Calling - Nigerians can call you for nearly free. Telemarketers who aren't total scammers can also call you for nearly free (the telco costs are already much less than US minimum wage, but foreign workers can be cheaper.) US Don't-Call-List laws don't have jurisdiction over non-US call centers, though they do cut down on the products that can be sold that way. A couple of years ago I got a call from a Nigerian Scammer using the Deaf Relay Operator services (which are free, and have I

  • Which part? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Srass (42349) * on Monday July 04 2005, @09:34PM (#12982607)
    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).
    • I think you are right. Avaya offers VoIP equipment. It has the same unbelievably high price and astonishing lack of quality as Avaya's other equipment (attention Intuity engineers: I'm looking at you). Meanwhile Cisco offers the same or better quality at low prices and without the bad service and clueless support.

      It's inevitable that the netheads will bury the bellheads. The only question is: when? 2007? 2020?

    • Re:Which part? (Score:5, Informative)

      by shitdrummer (523404) on Monday July 04 2005, @11:52PM (#12983052)
      I am the PABX Administrator for a medium-large (over 1500 staff) organisation. I work in the Comms section under a Comms Manager who only has a Data background, not voice.

      My manager is constantly telling me that our traditional PABX will be replaced by IP Telephony, and soon.

      We had one of our core data switches fail the other week. Our network has redundancy built in, but everything slowed to a crawl. I asked my Manager how Staff would have felt about not being able to use their phones if they were using IP Telephony. His response was that when IP Telephony is introduced, it will be connected to a physically separate network to our traditional data network. This is required because phones are an essential part of our business. There is no way that duplicating our data network to service IP telephony is going to save money vs. a TDM PABX.

      Our PABX has NEVER had any down time (apart from scheduled after hours maintenance or changes) in over 15 years. None. How many of you can say the same about your Data network at work?

      I see huge benefits with using VOIP, but in the right situations. Got a small office at a remote location that doesn't critically rely on phones? IP Telephony is the solution for you.

      Large organisation where phone services are critical to day to day operation, why risk it with IP telephony?

      Where I have used VOIP is for voice trunking over our data network to remote sites. Works great and can save a fair bit on phone calls, depending on the distance and your call rates of course.

      By the way, I also help to support our data network as well so if we do finally go IP Telephony I won't be out of a job.

      Shitdrummer.

  • The article is about business solutions... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HockeyPuck (141947) on Monday July 04 2005, @09:35PM (#12982608)
    ...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?

  • Consolidation... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HockeyPuck (141947) on Monday July 04 2005, @10:17PM (#12982760)
    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.

  • some clarification on the RBOCs and 1996; and VoIP (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jsailor (255868) on Monday July 04 2005, @10:33PM (#12982819)
    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.

  • VOIP Quality Concerns (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CokeJunky (51666) on Monday July 04 2005, @10:56PM (#12982880)
    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.

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