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The Internet Technology

Canadian Telco Telus Moves All Call Traffic to the Net 250

Posted by timothy from the they-are-a-changin' dept.
justice0x1 writes "An article on the Tornonto Star about Canada's Telus making a large scale motion to move all call trafic over to IP caught my eye today. 'Telus will become the first dominant phone carrier in North America to make the risky transition, a move much talked about and which Telus will make happen on a dramatic scale.' Since I work in the Telus Internet Service department, it will be interesting to see exactly how this new technology fares. Seems almost premature to me, but I guess it's all or nothing with telecomunications these days; you need to get an edge on the competition somehow. Why not start by moving youre entire long distance network over to IP?"
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Canadian Telco Telus Moves All Call Traffic to the Net More

Canadian Telco Telus Moves All Call Traffic to the Net

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  • Let's Call Mom!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by yoey ( 247125 ) * on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:50AM (#6046401) Journal
    Hi, mom? How're you doing? All is well wi....

  • Bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:50AM (#6046402)
    What kind of bandwidth would this require?

    • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:5, Informative)

      by PerlGuru ( 115222 ) * <michael@thegrebs.com> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:04AM (#6046467) Homepage
      I use Vonage [vonage.com] VOIP for my home phone and they require 90kbps both ways in their default config. They have an option to reduce the call quality, and thus the size. 90kbs is about 2/3rds the way to standard phone quality comming from cell phone quality, if that makes since to you.
      • 90kbs is about 2/3rds the way to standard phone quality comming from cell phone quality

        Wow. Ogg Vorbis music files encoded at 45-kbps sound very close to the original. I think they need to use some better quality.

        • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by oh ( 68589 )

          Wow. Ogg Vorbis music files encoded at 45-kbps sound very close to the original. I think they need to use some better quality.

          You don't really care how long it takes to encode a music file, and you can compress in chunks as large as you like. What matteres to a telephone conversation is lag, if I say something I don't want to have to wait 10 seconds for a reply. I can't record 10 seonds worth of data, compress it, and send it. I have to record something like 10ms worth (80 samples), compress this, and

      • If VOIP needs 90Kbps bandwidth then IP must be a *huge* overhead on the voice signal.

        When I worked for BT the scientists could compress "normal" voice data into around 6Kbps for normal landline quality speech.

        This was when the first telco-based answering services were being written, ie. your messages are stored by the Telco on a central storage platform and streamed to your phone when you need to access them.

        • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by billstewart ( 78916 )
          90kbps is 64kbps uncompressed audio with IP overhead. Sure, they can compress it to 6.5kbps and get cellphone-quality speech, but if they don't have to compress it for bandwidth reasons, it simplifies a lot of other things. I'd have expected the IP overhead to be a bit lower, but not a lot lower, and one of the problems with VOIP is that the IP overhead doesn't shrink just because the voice does, because the voice needs to send 100 or more samples per second to sound good, so they're all tinygrams.
      • huh ?

        90kbps is about 150% of the standard data rate used to carry telephone calls ... many businesses get their calls over T1 lines which are split into 24 x 64k channels.

        • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Actually the sample rate is 56kbit/sec on voice calls, which is where the 56k maximum theoretical speed of a modem comes from. 64kbit/sec is a full B channel. In the old days everything telco related was based around B channels (A T1 is 24 B channels for example). Most of the "old" telcos still around are still based on this. The newer companies have to work with it to interoperate but internally their networks probably aren't based on it.
          There's a big difference between desirable internet traffic fl

    • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmunRa ( 166367 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:15AM (#6046532) Homepage
      In europe, traditional circuit-switched telephone networks use channelised E1s, which basically have 15 64kbit/s data channels, along with a 64kbit/s control channel, giving a 2Mbit/s channel.

      Using H.323 (the main VoIP standard) you can choose from a number of compression codecs, from 32kbits upwards, although there exists a couple of codecs which sound pretty good (coparable to a average analogue phone line) at 64kbit/s, to you can make the transition without effecting you capacity.

      I was involved in some trials here in the UK, and (IIRC) we were using about 90kbits, and that was _crystal clear_ - the thing you most notice is that when no-one is talking, it is actually *silent* - you don't realise it until you try VoIP howe much noise is in a normal analog call.

      This is fact one of the advantages of VoIP, you can have in effect variable bitrate encoding, as if no-one is talking, then you don't have any data to encode!

      • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:4, Informative)

        by jcdr ( 178250 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:46AM (#6046707)
        Nope!

        E1 is 30 B channels at 64kbits/s + 1 D channel at 64kbits/s for signalisation plus 1 synchronisation and misc operator stuff at 64kbits/s. So E1 is 32*64k=2048Mbits/s.

        Some operators have services for 10, 12, 15, 20 or 24 channels depending of the offert but this is simply a limit of concurrent B channels open in a 30 B channles capacity E1 line.
      • Correction - you get 32 channels on an E1, with 2 lost to signalling and control, leaving 30 usable data channels... Sorry :-)

      • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by RovingSlug ( 26517 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @12:32PM (#6048866)
        the thing you most notice is that when no-one is talking, it is actually *silent* - you don't realise it until you try VoIP howe much noise is in a normal analog call.

        The background white noise in an analog phone call is artificially inserted ("comfort" noise). Studies showed users were not comfortable with a "dead" line, where the static reassures them the connection is still active.

    • These figures are rough and are based upon my personal experience with a Cisco VoIP gateway as well as some general knowledge of the CODEC's used, and the CODEC's used in CDMA and TDMA/GSM systems. Some of the CODEC's they have developed that are optimized for spoken word are really quite interesting.

      Okay, with the disclaimer out of the way, one channel of OK quality voice can be had for about 9.6kb, a good quality one you are looking closer to 14.4kb.
    • VoIP Standards [itu.int] are all made by ITU-T.

      The most widely used VoIP protocol is H.323. H323 allows negotiation of a compression CoDec. The base (worst) codec which must be supported is G.711 (64kb/s - this is what goes down an ISDN line - this is regarded as lossless digital encoding).

      Latency is dealt with by using QoS. I make calls from Australia to Europe through a VoIP carrier at a cost of about 3cents/minute. The round trip delay appears less than 0.2 seconds. The recommended CoDec is G.723.1 which is 5.3

  • New error messages (Score:5, Funny)

    by wiggys ( 621350 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:51AM (#6046404)
    "Sorry, but your call could not be connected at this time due to a 404 error. Please reconfigure your phone line and try again."

    • Re:New error messages (Score:5, Funny)

      by muonzoo ( 106581 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @09:14AM (#6046914)
      That's not just funny, it's in the SIP [a common VoIP protocol] spec! :

      RFC 3261 [rfc-editor.org] Section 21.4.5 clearly states:

      21.4.5 404 Not Found

      The server has definitive information that the user does not exist at
      the domain specified in the Request-URI. This status is also
      returned if the domain in the Request-URI does not match any of the
      domains handled by the recipient of the request.

      I see them every day at work if I misdial from my Cisco [cisco.com] 7960 [cisco.com].

      Made me laugh the first time; now it just makes me cry. :-)
  • I wouldn't trust them to carry voice over IP over the public Internet any more than I trust their DHCP servers to consistently provide an address.

    Hence the IPCop gateway on 24x7.

    • Re:IP != The Net (Score:5, Informative)

      by 8282now ( 583198 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:00AM (#6046452) Journal
      Just because it's VoIP, it doesn't mean it has to flow over the "public" IP network. They can simply point the VoIP over their own network and still see massive savings.

      For the VoIP/PSTN imparied, VoIP traffic can be optimized (that's compressed) down to 8K (or more, but a cost of clarity) as opposed to 56K for traditional circuit switched telephony traffic.
      And yes I have worked with the technology.
      • Read the subject.

        The article title implied the traffic would be on the public Internet instead of Telus' own network.

        And yes, I've worked with the technology too.

        Convincing my firm to get rid of their 20 year-old Rolm switch is a different story.

      • But just because it's not flowing over the public IP network doesn't mean there are no risks involved. Even at the telco grade the equipment doesn't seem to meet the same standards as voice.

        Case in point: Last year Worldcom found some sort of glitch in their cisco gear and that in turn crashed the border routers at several other ISPs. The fun happened when Group Telecom's routers went down hard taking their voip system with it.

        No internet and no means of calling their helpdesk to see what is going on.
      • Would it really see massive savings if it used VoIP over their own network? ATM packets are still 48 bit, having to have to throw another network protocol in there would just increase the overhead. And if they don't gurantee a channel, there's always a chance that someone's packet is going to be dropped if they load up lines with more than however many 48k channels would fit.

  • Hmm.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by watzinaneihm ( 627119 )
    In fact, the quality of the transmission was so good, so much like being there, that Telus engineers added a bit of noise to make the call sound, well, more normal.
    Just wait for the Slashdot effect to strike...., then you an have dropped packets, shift in time and all sort of digital noise... No need to add analog noise to it.

  • And So we move closer to integrated communication (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SkArcher ( 676201 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:52AM (#6046411) Journal
    Turnabout is fair play it seems. No more than 5 years ago, I was using a phone line to access the internet. Soon i'll be using the internet to make telephone calls.

    • Re:And So we move closer to integrated communicati (Score:4, Funny)

      by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:45AM (#6046701) Journal
      "Dear Sir,

      I am writing this letter to request ISP service from you. After that is completed, I will be able to telephone you to arrange a domain transfer.

      Incidentally, do you know to whom I can write to arrange for water service so I can watch CNN?"

    • I already am. Vonage [vonage.com] runs $40/mo for unlimited calling within the US and Canada. I did the math, and found that I could double my DSL upload speeds (which was needed as the 1.5/128k ADSL connection I had was not quite enough upload) and slightly reduce my monthly telco/internet costs. Since I'm on DSL, I still had to keep a landline, but it's the uber cheap one ($13/mo), had I been on cable the savings would've been even better. I'm totally happy with it. I did need to setup queueing on my outbound router t
      • I too use Vonage, and have been a little to lazy to set up a proper QoS solution, but would be very interested in a brief summary of what you did.

        Being the hack that I am, I whipped up a bash script using ngrep that sniffs the phone calls, pulls out caller ID and outgoing call numbers for syslogging, and can run commands when incoming or outgoing calls occur. I wrote this because I have long running rsync processes that I wanted killed and restarted when a call occurs.

        My script:
        watchp [2y.net]
    • Soon i'll be using the internet to make telephone calls.

      But when will I be able to use the internet to make a phone call with my modem in order to connect to the internet?
  • I'm sure this will eventually be the way of all telcos, but shouldn't they have waited until the Internet is a little more stable? I'd hate to be blocked off from the rest of the world if a router goes down in Seattle or something. This would be a huge increase in 'net traffic, and knowing Telus' ISP uptime personally, this kind of worries me.

  • Not the public Internet (I hope) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:55AM (#6046427)
    It should be noted that altough everything is transporter over IP, they are (probably :)) not transferring their voice over public Internet and it is not even connected to Internet in any way.

    It's still a private network, they are just shifting to a more generic and cost-effective infrastructure. So I suppose you still can not slashdot the phone network..

    • Re:Not the public Internet (I hope) (Score:5, Funny)

      by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:04AM (#6046471) Homepage
      So I suppose you still can not slashdot the phone network.

      My sister has been trying to DoS the phone network through overuse for many years now, so far to no effect.
    • I'm sure there'll be telco's who offer phones via computer to the real world, and use infrastructure to manage that w/o killing either networks.
    • So I suppose you still can not slashdot the phone network..

      Actually you CAN slashdot the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Netowork). And you always could. The equipment is sized to handle the expected peak loads with some slop. But there is nowhere near enough equipment in place to handle every phone being connected to another phone.

      You can slashdot it at several levels. The commonest is the "all-trunks busy" level - where all the routes from the calling phone to the called number (that the switching

  • A matter of time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RosCabezas ( 610805 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:56AM (#6046431) Homepage
    In fact it was just a matter of time. At last, telcos are realizing that technology is a helper and not a foe. Probably 3rd generation as designed is not going to generate the expected revenue and some side paths need to be found.
    • At last, telcos are realizing that technology is a helper and not a foe

      Because, you know, telephone companies have generally been luddites... what, with Bell Labs and the like...
  • In fact, the quality of the transmission was so good, so much like being there, that Telus engineers added a bit of noise to make the call sound, well, more normal.

    How different/irritating was the call that they needed to add the noise. Also does SprintPCS do this too? I would imagine that having no noise in a call would actually be a marketing edge (remember the pin droping commercial!)

    later,

    • Re:quality of sound (Score:3, Informative)

      by parc ( 25467 )
      The article is not technical, and this is pure market speak. What they were adding was probably "comfort noise." Comfort noise is placed in the dead air where you aren't actually sending sound (to save bandwidth).

      Another thing normally added is near-end echo. This is the sound of your own voice piped back at you with reduced volume, something that happens in the standard phone system naturally. People have become so used to hearing the echo that they think something is wrong if they don't get it. Beca

  • I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mericet ( 550554 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:56AM (#6046434) Homepage
    I wonder how much bandwidth they are going to allocate to a phone call once it's pure VoIP? and will it change according to load? what will be the effect on modem/fax data?

  • Great! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:58AM (#6046438)
    I used to have to yell at my roommates to get off the phone and stop hogging the phone line.

    Now I'll have to yell at them to get off the phone and stop hogging the bandwidth.

  • not 'to the net' (Score:4, Interesting)

    by delmoi ( 26744 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:01AM (#6046455) Homepage
    Dude, using IP dosn't mean they are transfering call trafic over the general internet. I really doubt they are going to give each phone line a real IP address rather then a 'local' one.

    It would be pretty cool if they did. Imagine an RFC standard phone protocol that was implemented on lots of telephone like devices. In conjunction with DHCP you could have an internet phone that worked as simply as a regular phone. And you could talk to anyone with a PC and/or another phone (maybe by typing in the IP address? :P probably not).

    Well, I can dream, can't I? (or is this not that far off? I know you can buy IP phones today, but I don't think that they can work with both the general internet and the general phone system)

  • It's worth a try (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GMontag ( 42283 ) <gmontag AT guymontag DOT com> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:02AM (#6046458) Homepage Journal
    This method certainly can't make them go out of business any faster than the other Canadian telcos.
    • The incumbant Canadian telcos are *swimming* in profits actually, because in many cases their profits are *proteted by regulation*, that is, they use the CRTC to protect their profit margins.

      You might find the CLEC's here having a hard time, but certainly not the incumbants like Bell, BCE, Telus, NBTel, etc.
      • Ah, my perception may be a bit clouded with all of the empty TeleGlobe and Nortel buildings around here in Northern Virginia.

        Not that there is any shortage of former MCI buildings (the Defense firm that employs me is about to take onof those over), but MCI seems to have leased from folk that rip the "badge" off of the building a little quicker than others.

        Thank you for the correction!

  • Having read a little deeper (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SkArcher ( 676201 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:03AM (#6046462) Journal
    The benefits, however, are enormous and noticeable, particularly on a carrier's balance sheet. Telus stands to substantially lower its operating and capital costs with the new infrastructure, and will be in a position to offer customers new business services that can combine voice, video and data. "We literally have three infrastructures," says Pathak, explaining that separate networks exist today to carry phone calls, Internet and data services, and video. "The goal is to merge into one simple platform.

    So their ultimate plan is to have Video, Phone and Data linked into the same system? An Extreme bandwidth use, but one that would raise some hopes of breaking down the current 'methods of communication' fragmentation and simply leaving us with one single, integrated, communications method.

    Now that raises all sorts of possibilities in terms of remote conferencing, especially as the younger, technically proficient generations move into higher echelons of the decision making process in government and corporations.

    Any ideas on what OS is used to control this?

  • So.. if you're dialing up the net on your modem, you potentially doing IP over PPP over Voice over IP ? I guess then you could load up a VoIP app and make a voice call too :)

    OK, so you wouldn't be dialing long distance in the first place, but still, it's a lot of protocols.
    • Ignoring the question of dialing a long-distance ISP...

      Most VoIP equipment out there will do one of two things when confronted with a modem or fax call: drop to g.711 (no compression at all), or drop to a proprietary method of connecting. It will actually intercept the call, change it to data, then back to modem tones at the far end, compressing with a different algorithm. than for voice.

  • "normal" call ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:08AM (#6046478)
    In fact, the quality of the transmission was so good, so much like being there, that Telus engineers added a bit of noise to make the call sound, well, more normal.

    They should drop calls and overcharge customers too to complete the picture.

  • Having worked for Telus (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Frederique Coq-Bloqu ( 628621 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:08AM (#6046480) Journal
    a bit outside of Québec City (I no longer work for them), I would say this is a generally good move. Most of the equipment, at least in Québec is shoddy stuff late 1950s. Needs constant maintainence. I can definitely see why they're upgrading.
    • How will this help in terms of delivering Quality of Service to different classes of customers? I am guessing that using "IP" will make it easier to balance the needs of high v. low level service agreements. Which means higher prices for their services, which = more money.

      So they might save money in terms of maintaining infrastructure, and also make more money from better control of their product.

  • MPLS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They're not going to go on general IP network but with a carrier-class MPLS network. Lets see who they will choose for their backbone, Cisco, Juniper or perhaps Chiaro or Hyperchip??
  • didn't Bank of America lose about 14,000 ATM machines [cotse.com] to the SQL Slammer worm?

    moving data across a public network isn't safe or intelligent. Let's hope they open their eyes before this foolisness gets any further.

  • IPv6? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HaloZero ( 610207 ) <protodeka@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:11AM (#6046500) Homepage
    Will the software used for this transition support IPv6? Will it be BASED on IPv6? I mean, the point of IPv6 is to give us more IP addresses than the initial 256 * 256* 256 * 256, and moving an entire phone network would only make the IP addressing problem worse (if not using v6...), right?
    • As it is a private network, they'll most likely be using some RFC1918 (10.0.0.0, 172.16-31.0.0, 192.168.0.0) address space. The only devices moving to VoIP are the phone switches themselves, not the end phones. The customer won't even know there has been a change.
  • From what I can see everything is heading toward one device - the PC. The PC of the future, as many of us know, will be compact enough to put on a table top (or under your TV) and will be a compliment to your lounge/living room as it may be well designed and stylish.

    So, what's going to come through this little wonder? Well pretty much everything. People will have wireless digital phones which connect to this 'base unit' via bluetooth or other wireless tech. All this telephone traffic will travel across a

  • Spam (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:14AM (#6046522)
    By treating voices and video like any other piece of data, such as e-mail

    Soon Canadians will be getting enlarge-your-penis and invest-in-nigeria phone calls.

  • For more info. (Score:3, Informative)

    by AmunRa ( 166367 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:19AM (#6046560) Homepage
    The main VoIP standard is H.323 - Check out OpenH323 [openh323.org], an open-source implentation of this technology.
  • ..I use Vonage [vonage.com] for my phone at home. I do not even have a land-line installed in my apartment. I find the features to blow any phone company away, and the price and service is excellent.

    Besides the overall geekness of being totally VoiP, I have had nothing but good experiences with it.

    And I get to have an LA and NY number....
    Rob

  • Goddamnit! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ryvar ( 122400 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:24AM (#6046589) Homepage
    In fact, the quality of the transmission was so good, so much like being there, that Telus engineers added a bit of noise to make the call sound, well, more normal.

    Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!

    I was going to use a modem over VoIP! Curse you, Telus!

  • IPv6 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Luguber123 ( 203502 )
    Are they using IPv6 for the voice transmissions? It sounds like a good idea to me (not beeing a field expert tho..) since there are a lot of QoS features and security features in v6, wich would require a lot of extra hassle with v4.

    Anyways I'm moving as far away from telco business as possible. After 20 years, as a customer, I'm less than satisfied with the 'competitive' pricing of services.
    • But if it's a voice-only network, all traffic is going to look the same, so QoS would have no affect. Further, just because you'd use a QoS-enabled protocol like IPv6, it doesn't mean the traffic would be given different priority. You have to have QoS-enabled switches and most importantly routers to look at those packets and give priority to the right ones. For voice traffic, since it's RTP, it's very easy to identify and have QoS priorities for that traffic without IPv6's extra QoS field info.

  • Death of Alaxander Gram Bell's invention (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @08:34AM (#6046648)
    Remarkably enough, telephone technology hasn't really changed all that much since it's invention. the infrastructure has changed vastly, but for the most part, you can still use a first generation telephone over copper, with the exception of the cellular model. This is probally why it's no great shock to me that mobile phones are the first to actually experiment with adapting.

    My first reaction to this move to tcp/ip based voice communication is great, dispite the fact that the telephone it self has a remarkable level of simplisity to it. Speaker, amp, microphone, even without a touch tone generator most networks i'm familar with still permit the rotery system, a call can be placed by touching wires together in that rythmic fasion.

    So what is there to be gained by TCP/IP transport for telephone use, assuming we are talking about the classic land line as well as the mobile, a great deal i'd say. Fax machines for one thing will no longer be barred by that pesky 9600/14000 bandwidth issue, color faxing can be an option. A "mobile" could in theory be jacked into a land line and calls can be recieved regardless of reception, eliminating the need for features like call forwarding. A push to upgrade to this cheeper form of transport could push the telcos to actually upgrade way out of the way regions to this new digital system, so even Farmer Joe miles away from the CO could get reliable network access. Let alone the boom to the deaf community.. even with present mobile text and instent messaging it has practicaly rendered ye old TDD terminal obsolete.

    But... there is a major downside. It puts control of network access back to the telcos, well not like they don't have it already. We create a dependence on high technology, requiring all homes being essentally wired for network. We also create a dependence on power, not that classic telephone doesn't take a bit of juice, but imagine if everyone's house had additional DA converters, and essentally hubs rather then splitters. Privacy could be made a think of the past, as packet sniffers could be employed to actually track specific people without the physical access that is presently required.

    But I'm leaning more tward the side of the fact that there is just so much crap I want rendered obsolete, and a level of digital intrigration I would like to achieve. I no longer want to be barred by the limits of dialup service being the only thing that can be actived on demand, I want phones to be TCP/IP ready.

    And yes... I want mobile phones to actually provide high speed internet and I want it everywhere! And if this means I can't use my circa 1970's phone that I bought specificly to be compatable with my first acustic(sp) modem and so be it.
  • By "the Net" I assume you're referring to the internet.

    I just thought I should let you know that IP is not the same as the internet. You know, just to keep you from embarrasing yourself on the front page of a really popular website that has "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters".

  • Hold the phone. (Score:5, Informative)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @09:09AM (#6046875)
    As a few posts have already descibed, VoIP is not the same as voice over the internet. The VoIP that Telus is using is actually being carried over dedicated data circuits which offer, not only high speed (OC-12 +), but also end to end Quality of Service control. Indeed, these dedicated data circuits may well carry some internet traffic as well, but Telus is able to run the voice traffic at a higher priority than the less time sensitive data.

    In fact, this is already being done by several carriers including Sprint, MCI, Intermedia, Verizon and probably others.

    I have also installed numerous private networks utilizing Nortel or Cisco equipment to carry VoIP over dedicated private networks, usually frame-relay WANs. These VoIP calls are 100% reliable and are perfectly clear.

    In two cases standard internet connections (cable, xDSL, frame-relay) were used to carry calls between several different offices in the United States, Canada, Europe and Mexico. These connections are not always as clear as those running on private WANs but, they have proven to be 98% reliable and are indistinguishable from regular land lines, in terms of clarity, 85% of the time.

    • In fact, this is already being done by several carriers including Sprint, MCI, Intermedia, Verizon and probably others.

      I have also installed numerous private networks utilizing Nortel or Cisco equipment to carry VoIP over dedicated private networks, usually frame-relay WANs. These VoIP calls are 100% reliable and are perfectly clear.

      A couple of years back, Videotron had a project going to provide phone service over their cable modem infrastructure.

      They had the pilot going with the employees, and it

  • Tornonto (Score:3, Funny)

    by Apostata ( 390629 ) <apostata@hotmFOR ... m minus language> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @09:15AM (#6046922) Homepage Journal
    Meanwhile, in hockey news, the Ananheim Mighty Ducks face the Newn Jersney Devils.

    (I see the upcoming pot de-regulation is having it's effect)

  • IANALuddite, but... (Score:3)

    by gobbo ( 567674 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @09:17AM (#6046936) Journal
    you'll get my old black rotary phone with the real metal bells and indestructible hard shiny plastic and nice neck-cradling handset when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

    No electricity? no problem, it still works. Plus, analog has nostalgia value, too!

    Maybe there's a cool mod someone's done for old phones like this so that we can convert them to VOIP...
  • Why not start by moving
    youre entire long distance network over to IP
    It's your
  • As a fellow Canadian, I'm interested in this move. Our LUG [vlug.org] had a presentation on Linux Telephony, VOIP and such a month or two ago. If you're interested, grab the . [vlug.org]

    The problem as I see it, I think Telus has figured out a way to charge for Long Distance with VoIP that THEY implement. I'd be weary of it myself. But who knows, Telus could surprise me, but I doubt it.
  • "Why not start by moving youre entire long distance network over to IP?"

    Because circuit-switched voice doesn't suffer from dropouts every time there's a sudden interest in the latest /. story?

    VoIP is like hauling gravel via airplane. You can do it, but that's not what airplanes are good at.
  • Based on what I see in the article they are talking about using a VOIP infrastructure to replace their TDM infrastructure between switches.

    (I'll use the US network as an example since its the one I'm most familiar with)

    Right now each state is broken up into LATAs (Local Access Telecommunication Area - IIRC). Within each LATA there is a LD tandem which lets IXCs (long-distance carriers) accept and terminate calls to the local phone providers within that LATA.

    The IXCs in turn have their own switches which
  • Thought it was worth noting, Sprint is up to pretty much the same thing right now:
    http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/story.jsp?flo c=FF-APO-1700&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20030527%2F0818 18105.htm&sc=1700 [netscape.com]
  • From the submission: "An article on the Tornonto Star about Canada's Telus...caught my eye today." and later "Since I work in the Telus Internet Service department..."

    Is anybody else bothered that Telus's Internet Service department is finding this out by reading the Toronto Star?

  • caaaaan ou h ear e ow?

  • Don't Worry... companies like BELL will ruin it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zaqattack911 ( 532040 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @01:10PM (#6049255) Journal
    Why not start by moving youre entire long distance network over to IP?

    Quite simply Large monopoly Telco's have invested large amounts of cash in the already existing (and out of date) telephone network, and would rather blow up the planet than see that change. Have a look at this [nwfusion.com] .

    Bell , AT&T will start whining to governments for compensation or tax immediatly.

    All I'd like to know is when did the government make it a priority to start protecting large corps from the consumers, instead of protecting the consumers from corps.

  • Internet via VPN (Score:3, Interesting)

    by redback ( 15527 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @01:46PM (#6049607)
    I assume that eventually they plan to run some kind of IP service to peoples houses, and use VoIP phones. What would be nice if you could use say, some kind of VPN, to get to a internet router, and obtain a public IP.

    Theres your broadband......

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