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Sprint Moves Phone Network to IP 212

Posted by timothy from the all-the-rage dept.
Ryan Barrett writes "Sprint announced that it has 'begun transforming its telephone network so voice calls are transmitted in packets.' AP article here. Combined with a recent /. story about Telus doing the same thing, this sets an interesting precedent. Many telcos already use packet-switching to handle a significant chunk of their calls. Is this the beginning of the end for circuit-switched networks?"
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Sprint Moves Phone Network to IP More

Sprint Moves Phone Network to IP

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  • Telus Calls Sprint (Score:5, Funny)

    by yoey ( 247125 ) * on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:27AM (#6055282) Journal
    Hello, Sprint? This is Telus. You stole our idea you son-of-a-bit....

  • Ouch, now I have to remember IP addresses too (Score:5, Funny)

    by infonography ( 566403 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:31AM (#6055294) Homepage
    I am so gonna miss the (555) 123 4567 type numbers. Will you have to use the * key to make the dots in the quads?

    Reminds me of that old Dogbert Joke about having a Tilde in the phone number. I wonder how long it will be till them move to IPv6, won't that be a joy to dial.

  • More like the middle of the end (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tgma ( 584406 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:32AM (#6055298)
    The beginning of the end started when the equipment manufacturers started producing boxes that allowed VoIP calls to have the same quality as circuit-switched ones. We all probably make a lot more IP calls than we are aware of.

    The quicker companies do this, the better it will be for their margins - this news from Sprint probably doesn't mean much for their users, but their shareholders should be happy. The cost of carrying VoIP is much lower, which is what allows those calling card companies to stay in business.

    • Already going on .... elsewhere (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      there is nothing new to this kind of thinking.
      there is a paradigm shift going on through out the telecom voice/data industry ... moving from pay-per-connect (time) to pay-per-use (bandwidth)

      such a move is already being made in the "test-bed " countries like CHINA and INDIA where the telco network is newly gaining great importance in infrastructure.

      already in INDIA the BhartiGroup and RELAINCE (2 main telco operators) have their backbones as IP based traffic.

      it seems strange that such a move made in such

      • Re:Already going on .... elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)

        by uspsguy ( 541171 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @06:45AM (#6055618) Homepage
        Gee! Isn't it amazing that countries that don't have an infrastructure would be building one using current technology and a country that has a huge, solid, working one would be a little slower to convert to something new. Because the US was an "early addopter" of telephone technology, we're a little slower upgrading but we've been talking all over the country for a loooong time.
    • And I can already imagine the price going up. Supposedly the hone companies already bill thie customers for stuff they don't even have [slashdot.org], I can only imagine the further charges when they start arguing they have to maintain their switching systems as well.

      Crooks, every last one of 'em. I hope that as soon as they all to to VoIP, someone figures out how to connect to it from a standard computer and bypass the local phone company completely! (And yes, I know there already exists a way for calling someone on you
      • check out vonage. www.vonage.com they provide a box that plugs into your network, and has an rj-11 phone jack. really, really cool service, and it's cheap and good. Take the vonage box anywhere, plug it in, and your standard $10 telephone rings there as if it's local.

        it's cool stuff. a friend of mine is using it and I'm signing up next week.

    • Re:More like the middle of the end (Score:5, Insightful)

      by otmar ( 32000 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @06:07AM (#6055531) Homepage
      I doubt that Sprint will be able to keep charging their users the old rate. The savings will be passed on to the customers sooner or later.

      There is a really good article [shirky.com] on the economics invoved by Clay Shirky. Recommended reading.

      /ol

      • Re:More like the middle of the end (Score:5, Insightful)

        by lynx_user_abroad ( 323975 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @08:19AM (#6056083) Homepage Journal
        Yes, but...

        There is a really good article [shirky.com] on the economics invoved by Clay Shirky.

        However, there's a new component here: the "legislative" layer.

        In the ZapMail scenario, individual businesses could replace the FedEx service simply by buying a fax machine; but that's only because of FCC rules which a) demanded that common carriers (the phone companies) could not discriminate against different users of the network, and b) allow any non-destructive device to be connected to the Public Switched Network. In other words, the fax machine revolution was sparked by FCC rules which created an open and equal (Lessig would call it "flat and end-to-end") network on top of which others could build and innovate.

        However, the FCC has chosen a different path with "broadband" these days. The FCC has already begun to rule (and appears ready to go whole hog with more rulings) that companies which provide broadband services own their network. If we were replaying ZapMail today, that means the phone companies would be allowed to prevent individual businesses from using their network to transfer documents via fax. Customers who wanted to deliver a document would have to use either an authorized corporate partner (in this case, FedEx) or the services of the telephone company itself.

        We're already seeing manifestations of this in the Internet today; Most ISP's won't allow individuals to use port 25 (SMTP) so if you want to send email, you have to use the server provided by the ISP. That service is no longer available to customers, even the ones who have already bought equipment capable of sending and receiving email direrctly.

        Consider AOL's position concerning mailing lists: If you want to provide a mailing list (free or fee) service to AOL subscribers, you must either a) run your list from an "approved" (read: corporate partner) server, or b) trudge through a lengthly approval process to get your mailing list onto the "whitelisted" list. It's not a far stretch to see the day when there will be a fee to mailing list managers in order to service AOL subscribers, and that will be the end of the free mailing list.

        So, the next thing to fail will be the "free" services currently offered on the Internet.

        We're already seeing pressure on major business sites to get an AOL keyword associated with their site. For all I know, getting that keyword cost money. If it doesn't already, it soon will. When that starts to happen, I wonder if Slashdot will be pulling in enough revenue to maintain contact with it's AOL customers, or if Slashdot will become another site AOL subscribers have to jump through hoops (or pay and extra "access" fee) to access?

        Will we see a day when on-line gamers will be required to use only the "service provider approved" gaming server, because ports to other servers are blocked? Isn't Microsoft doing something like this already on MSN requiring a Passport to access their Gaming server?

        Will we soon see the day when trying to access any "terrorist" news site (like Al Jazerra) will be impossible, and accessing any "liberal" (read: non-corporate/administration partner) news site will be slow and unreliable at best? And if you're trying to get to the campaign web site of the non-incumbent candidate, well, you can just forget it.

        There's more at work here than just simple economics. Without on open networking layer as we had with the PSN, there won't be the kind of telecommunications revolution we say after the AT&T breakup in 1984.

    • The beginning of the end started when the equipment manufacturers started producing boxes that allowed VoIP calls to have the same quality as circuit-switched ones.

      They did? I've recently been in some training where we discussed the problems of getting VOIP to work on networking gear. It was interesting to see scenarios where one slight change to MTUs, etc., caused a 180 degree reversal of QoS behavior. Nothing I've looked at, including carrier class boxes, handles VOIP worth a damn. Data boxes, and

  • Not IP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NeuroKoan ( 12458 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:35AM (#6055309) Homepage Journal
    The article didn't state that Sprint was switching to an IP based network, just a packet switched network. Is this actually going to use IP? A quick google search [google.com] brought up no mention of IP (but I'm also lazy, so I only read the first page of links).

    • Re:Not IP (Score:5, Informative)

      by hughk ( 248126 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:46AM (#6055333) Journal
      Modern switches can talk IP. They are essentially just computers with some specialised I/O. Switches can talk to each other locally via a LAN and they can send long distance traffic via a variety of WAN connections. IP6 has been preferred for a while between switching centres because of the QoS support. The lower layer is generally ATM.

      A friend who used to work for Nortel (didn't many) mentioned this. Worldcom did most of their long distance stuff on top of IP6.

      • Re:Not IP (Score:5, Informative)

        by cfulmer ( 3166 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @08:26AM (#6056148) Journal
        So, I'm a very recent ex-nortel person who did a lot of packet stuff. If I recall correctly, Sprint's network is an ATM one, either AAL1 or AAL2. AAL5 is IP-over-ATM, and isn't as common.

        Note that in general, these are all behind-the-scenes private networks. You will still be circuit-switched to a point (inside your local office, typically). Then there'll be a TDM-to-packet gateway which converts your circuit-switched connection into ATM (or IP).

        From an IP point of view, one of the side effects of this is that you don't need a seperate IP address for every phone, or even a seperate address for every house. All you need is an IP address/port number combination for each end of an active call in any given network. (And there are ways of getting around that restriction too.) Since these are all private networks cut off from the internet, IPV4 provides more than enough addresses.

        Packet telephony all the way to the home, at least from the telcos, is some ways off. You'd either have to have a gateway inside your house to which you connect all your legacy phones, or you'd replace all the phones with IP phones. As you can probably see, there's a lot of inertia behind that *not* happening -- try convincing your great uncle Bert that he needs to replace all the phones in his house.
        • But this was already done in some form.

          How long has it been since you've seen a rotary telephone in use? ...
          • How long has it been since you've seen a rotary telephone in use?

            A long time, but if I flip the switch on my phone, I can still call anyone. Backwards compatibility doesn't exist in the IP phone switchover.
            • Backwards compatibility doesn't exist in the IP phone switchover.

              If you use a gateway to convert touch tone and rotary phones to IP, there is no reason why backwards compatability cannot be implemented for use with the current hardware. Backwards compatability for the phone numbers, and emergency service (911 here in the states), would require a software solution. That should not be to dificult to do (even for the phone companies)

              How long has it been since you've seen a rotary telephone in use? Thi

        • I know that it usually doesn't go much beyond the Central Office, but do big private switches ever connect in via IP. The last installation I had my teeth on, we had fibre coming in to a box from the telco and separate lines coming out of the box for the switch and data. My area was just the data and we just saw an unswitched circuit (well, actually lots, but each delivered separately).

  • Let me guess (Score:3, Funny)

    by botzi ( 673768 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:37AM (#6055313)
    ..will make it cheaper for Sprint to grow its network..
    , unfortunately, monthly fees will rise with 25% due to the *better* services that'll be provided....;o)...

  • IPV6 (Score:5, Funny)

    by termos ( 634980 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:37AM (#6055314) Homepage
    Call me on 3ffe:0501:0008:0000:0260:97ff:fe40:efab, see you soon.

    • Re:IPV6 (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:01AM (#6055377)
      hmm, so much for easy to remember phone numbers like 1-800-CARPETS.

      Now it'll be 1-800-I-DONT-HAVE-A-FLOOR-U-INSENSITIVE-CLOD

      • Re:IPV6 (Score:2, Interesting)

        by ebh ( 116526 ) *
        They already do that 1-800-TOO-MANY-DIGITS thing.

        The longest one I actualy saw was 1-800-333-DIAMONDS, and they did emphasize the S at the end (unlike 1-800-MATTRES, "leave off the last S for savings").

        Do they do that idiocy outside the US too, or is this another example of our monopoly on stupidity?

    • Re:IPV6 (Score:3, Funny)

      by c_g_hills ( 110430 )
      I tried calling you, but the host appears to be down..
      Pinging 3ffe:501:8:0:260:97ff:fe40:efab from 2001:630:1c0:1:201:2ff:fea9:9ae0 with 32 bytes of data:

      Destination host unreachable.
      Destination host unreachable.
      Destination host unreachable.
      Destination host unreachable.

      8 149 ms 149 ms 149 ms 2001:200:0:6c04::1
      9 281 ms 279 ms 287 ms pc1.notemachi.wide.ad.jp [2001:200:0:6c01:290:27ff:fe3a:d8]
      10 277 ms 276 ms 277 ms pc6.otemachi.wide.ad.jp [2001:200:0:1800::9c4:0]
      11 Destination host
      • >tracert 2001:630:1c0:1:201:2ff:fea9:9ae0

        Tracing route to chaz.ws.ipv6.ne-worcs.ac.uk [2001:630:1c0:1:201:2ff:fea9:9ae0] over a maximum of 30 hops:

        1 3 ms 2 ms 3 ms 3ffe:b80:1c5d:1:200:cff:fe3e:d15a
        2 72 ms 137 ms 126 ms 3ffe:b80:3:5d89::1
        3 97 ms 77 ms 66 ms tu-viagenie.ipv6.noris.de [2001:780::b]
        4 157 ms 179 ms 197 ms 3ffe:b00:c18:1017::2
        5 467 ms 465 ms 454 ms 3ffe:2100:1:9::c13f:5e06
        6 * 529 ms 516 ms 2001:630:0:f006::2
        7 463
  • so they will be laying new lines for this?
    • Probably not.

      For one thing, there are bundles upon bundles of dark fiber (run but never utilized) stretched between the metropolitan centers that they've yet to find a use for.

      Secondly, laying fiber is expensive. The cost of converting to VoIP from their regular gear has got to be enormous, and if they had to lay fiber there's now way they could afford it. The only way Sprint could justify the conversion is if they were able to use their existing lines.

      ***************

      Speaking of Sprint, last year at

  • Circuit Switching will still be around... (Score:5, Informative)

    by krystal_blade ( 188089 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:46AM (#6055335)
    I really can't see an end to circuit switched networks any time soon. The switch to Packeted data is fine for most commercial traffic, but there are a few areas that will continue to require "locked in" circuits as opposed to packet buffering systems.

    There is a lot of value in the use of packetized data. More "lines" over fewer trunks is just one of them, and for your average, everyday user, they will not notice the difference.

    On the other hand, certain timing based encryption schemes will have to remain on locked in circuits to function. The latency caused through the use of packet buffering regardless of how slight, may be enough to cause a "handshake" failure, or just spew unintelligable garbage.

    Of course, as encryption systems become more and more robust the need for "hard lines" will start to dissipate.

    I for one welcome our new packetized telephone overlords...

    krystal_blade

  • That's cool but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by GreggyBUIUC ( 262370 )
    ... I still doubt I'll be able to make calls on my Sprint PCS phone between 9-10pm. Once 'nights' kicks in in this town the network is perpetually busy.

  • Damn! (Score:5, Funny)

    by HornyBastard77 ( 667965 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:50AM (#6055355)
    If they get rid of dedicated circuits then how am I going to get out of the Matrix anymore?

  • beginning of the end for circuit-switched networks (Score:5, Funny)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:51AM (#6055357) Journal
    It seems that technology moves in cycles...

    "Serial is slow, let's move to parallel."
    "Now parallel is slow, let's go to serial."

    It all started with central, time-sharing systems, then switched to distributed computing when the technology permitted, and there now a trend torwards centralized administration again.

    Batch processing was popular, then on-line processing replaced it, now many things are going back to batch processing because of the time/cost advantages it provides.

    It seems that as technologies disappear, even newer technologies come along that remind everyone of the (still) very valid why they were using the older technologies in the first place.

    Just wait, in 5-10 years, CRTs will be popular once again, and I suppose circuit switching will probably find a new foothold as well.

    • Re:beginning of the end for circuit-switched netwo (Score:5, Informative)

      by w1r3sp33d ( 593084 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @06:21AM (#6055560)
      The first telco wiring was bundles of copper lines, one pair per phone call (anyone see that picture of San Fran circa 1930 where you nearly couldn't see the water through the lines?) The second phase of telco life was TDM, one wire pair=one T1 with 24 paths and a path was created on the fly across one of these "channels." Now packet switching city to city is really the current answer, I don't see us going back to installing thousands of miles of copper in a city or installing TDM technology anywhere but to the doorstep.

      I have been installing VOIP, VOFR, and IP Telephony for years now for many businesses, I have lots of 99.999% uptime systems, no complaints in almost two years for quality of voice, I can't believe /.ers are amazed and puzzled by such simple things as a forty year old idea being used by a carrier. I guess /. isn't what it used to be.

      • I can't believe /.ers are amazed and puzzled by such simple things as a forty year old idea being used by a carrier. I guess /. isn't what it used to be.

        Amazed and puzzled? I think not.

        All I'm trying to point out is that they will no doubt discover some purpose in the future where switched-circuit systems are better suited than packet switching.

        It's quite possible the more important systems will go back to being circuit switched because of the better reliablity... With no other devices sharing the line

    • "Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions." -- Albert Einstein

    • Circuit switching will probably return under the guise of "guaranteed quality of service" over the unreliable packet switched network. In fact, ATM does virtual circuit switching already.

  • Assuming at some point in the future voice calls will be via "packets" from end to end, instead of just from the exchange to exchange, what kind/amount of bandwidth would/does reliable conversatinons require.

    Anyone using this type of service already, how good is the quality on it? Also how does the phone connect to the providers server?

    Looks very promising and should hopefully lead to at least a freeze in the cost of phone calls, and hopefully a steady decrease.

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

      by pe1rxq ( 141710 )
      You can compress voice down below 20kbits and get a quality comparable with analogue phone lines.
      I believe GSM uses 13kbits (or in that neighbourhood) and I have used the speex codec in 8kbits mode recently and it give good enough quality to make conversations.
      If you use uncompressed audio you need about 32kbits.

      Jeroen
  • Will Sprint use the Evil Bit? [slashdot.org]

  • About Freaking time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:07AM (#6055395)
    Part of my major complaint in the 21century is the fact that modem technology has not really improved a whole hell of alot. Sure we have Cable and xDSL service if you are lucky enough to live near a place where they saw fit to actually upgrade.

    When I see stuff like this, I get this warm happy feeling inside when it seems like it's actually a *good* idea to actually upgrade from our old vintage phone system to something that can do a hell of alot more useful things. Datapackets can be uniquely identified as "voice" "fax" or "data", which could in theory make a whole slew of things possible...

    Though it makes me wonder, if the telcos are going for packet based voice communications, why the hell would I bother placing a long distance call through them when I can use VoIP software. Don't get me wrong, i'll all for the idea digital packet based phone service, if for nothing else but making all phones with that service high speed internet ready.

    • Just because it's IP (which it may not even be in this case, I think it's ATM) does not mean it's connected to the Internet. It's a bunch of private lines owned by the Telco.

  • But will this benefit the consumer ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:08AM (#6055397)

    Nice idea and all that but how will the consumer benefit from this ? will we get lower call charges or will the CEO just get another 5million on his paypacket ?

    • Re:But will this benefit the consumer ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:34AM (#6055457)
      Consumer benifits....

      1. One phone number for multi devices (I think this was covered in the article).

      2. Phone numbers not tied to physical location, but rather device or authentication. Would be most nifty for mobiles to go landline. (this was covered)

      3. Multi communication... end users could in theory have two telephones, and place two calls on the same line. No further need for an alarm wire from your telco.

      4. No D/A loss when you copy your CD over your phone.

      5. Everyone is highspeed internet ready... in theory you need 32Kbit for decent voice, perhaps 64K / 128K bit just to be safe. Pay more money to throttle you up to internet speeds... no more waiting for low paid installers.

      6. Networked appliances no longer need "internet access" but rather phone access, and no gay ass 300 baud modems in your digital cable box.

      • Re:But will this benefit the consumer ? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by blastedtokyo ( 540215 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:51AM (#6055495)
        Not so fast. This is Sprint's long distance network. If your local telco's still using tin cans, it's not going to enable any of this. What it does mean is that the next time there's a SQL Slammer or other bug clogging the web, you're phone service is down too. I bet they're getting funded by corporate IT and helpdesk staff.
        • No, this isn't Sprint's long distance network. It is Sprint LTD (local telecommunications division). It also doesn't mean that any bug clogging the web will bring down service - this is not voice over the Internet. In fact, it is not even voice over IP. It's voice over ATM.
      • 3. Multi communication... end users could in theory have two telephones, and place two calls on the same line.

        This was Sprint ION. DSL and up to four voice phone lines over the same wire.

        Sprint pulled the plug on it last year, after losing a lot of money. They had some deployment problems, but users able to get it were reportedly happy with it. They shut it down just before it was scheduled to be deployed at my CO.

        From what I've been able to gather, a large part of the problem was Sprint's CLEC st

  • It'll never work (Score:4, Funny)

    by cordsie ( 565171 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:08AM (#6055399)
    What happens if voice IP traffic gets mixed with, say, a few Quake deathmatch packets? What happens if a bot starts taking railgun shots at bits of your conversation with your Mother? Or if a L33T D00D pulls down the grid for an entire city with a strategically placed rocket? I want answers, damn it!

    • Re:It'll never work (Score:2, Informative)

      by noselasd ( 594905 )
      Very simple. It doesn't get mixed in. These networks are (ofcourse) private and the traffic on it are controlled. Meaning yoo don't get access to it unless you dig up the fibre yourself and use fibre splitters on them.
    • I would be more concerned if bits of typical Kazaa traffic got mixed in your conversation with your mother ;).
  • Unlikely that this will do anything except increase their margins. Established players do not generally like to change the rules of their markets. So, this is like saying "Sprint move from copper to fibre". Yeah,... international calls going to be any cheaper? Forget it.

    Somewhere out there, someone is building systems that _will_ have a significant impact on telephony. Find these guys - that will be news.

  • Intellectual property, or real property? (Score:3, Funny)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:11AM (#6055411) Homepage
    Sprint Moves Phone Network to IP

    Why, was property in the real world too expensive?

    [rimshot]

    Thanks, I'll be here all the week.
  • I presume the insertion of "IP" in the title of this article was a mistake or assumption made by a naeive author? You don't use IP to carry telephone calls on a phone network. Ever. IP is no good for carrying voice data and there are many better protocols around which were designed for this purpose. I presume that they really mean ATM or some other voice protocol? You need a small packet, circuit based protocol to handle large numbers of voice calls efficiently. Although IP could be made to work, it would b

    • Re:IP?! Or ATM? Or something else? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by richard_willey ( 79077 ) <richard_willey.hotmail@com> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @06:31AM (#6055575)

      I beg to differ.

      Voice over IP is already standard part of corporate IT. It is rapidly leaking into the consumer space.

      Historically, Big Dumb Pipes have continually displaced managed bandwidth type systems. Voice over IP is just the latest example.

      I did a consulting project for Qualcomm as part of my classwork last semester studying whether 802.11b has the potential to disrupt CDMA networks. People might find the paper interesting, since it indirectly addresses many of the same issues.

      http://web.mit.edu/~rwilley/www/Qualcomm.pdf

    • CISCO VOIP phone (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) *
      In my office for the last few years I've had a Cisco VOIP phone - the only connections it has are power and network. It works pretty well, and that's an older phone.

      Voice over IP is the way voice traffice will be handled in the future. The article talks about sending IP traffic over ATM, at least for now - it's more expensive that way but the cost of new switches is also quite high.

      You might want to read more on the "Martini Draft" and MPLS to get a sense of how ATM will be replaced by IP technologies.
    • I presume the insertion of "IP" in the title of this article was a mistake or assumption made by a naeive author? You don't use IP to carry telephone calls on a phone network. Ever.

      Umm... no. Many telephone companies are moving AWAY from circuit switched networks to packet switched ones (whether that be IP or some other protocol). Why? First, it's cheaper (you can use more commodity hardware, especially if you're using IP). Second, it can be more efficient, since traffic can be re-routed to make bett

  • Wiretapping (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:26AM (#6055444)
    The really fun thing about this means that any router can be told to simply copy every packet in a particular conversation to law enforcement.

  • Packet Switched Voice is not the Internet (Score:4, Informative)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:31AM (#6055454) Homepage
    Although they will probably use IP to transport voice data between their switches, that does not mean that any of the data will travel over the public Internet or that the end users will use IP. All this does is change the design of the subnet used to transport voice data in between toll switches, not the interface between the toll switch and the end user.

    • their switches

      That's got to a key ingredient. The ingredient that probably caused other posters to think - "No Way can this work!"

      If voice service were conducted over some of the public pieces of the internet that I use, the latency chop effect would make Max Headroom sound smooth.

  • And in the UK (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:42AM (#6055473)
    British Telecom's main fibre optic backbone is a packet-switched network. It's only the "last mile" that's truly circuit switched these days. We have a fairly modern telephone system in the UK, only hampered by stupid area codes based on centres of population rather than numbers of people as in the US (so the big towns such as London, Bristol, Reading and Leicester ran out of numbers quickly and had to have their codes changed). To be fair, no-one anticipated fax machines and data connections when the coding system was decided.
  • All very nice but what happens when one VoIP office needs to talk to another VoIP office over the packetized carrier. The analog voice data will be packetized in the first office to pass over there LAN converted to analog for the connection into the carrier who convert back to packetized data to cross this carrier, converting back to analog to interface with the second office who the re packetize to cross their LAN. With all the buffering required to do this what's the quality going to be like at the far en

  • Nortel vs. Cisco (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Disco2k ( 158722 )
    Wow! I was just about to post to the now inactive Telus using VOIP discussion since I spotted this article [globetechnology.com] from The Globe and Mail about Sprint.

    I found it interesting that Telus, a Canadian telco, will use equipment from American companies Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks whereas Sprint, an American telco will use equipment from Canada's Nortel.

    I have nothing particularly insightful to say right now. Talk amongst yourselves ;-)

  • hope they have echo cancellation (Score:3, Funny)

    by blastedtokyo ( 540215 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:48AM (#6055486)
    Sprint with packet switching. So clear, you can hear a pin drop...twice.

  • Not IP but ATM (Score:5, Informative)

    by geirt ( 55254 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @06:09AM (#6055536)
    The Sprint Press Release [sprint.com] states that they are going to use ATM, not IP.
    • But that is packet based (IP like) traffic over ATM. They are just using ATM because it will take them a while to replace the ATM switches - elsewhere they say about 14 years until they have a "native" packet based network!

  • Some questions/observations (Score:5, Informative)

    by whovian ( 107062 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @06:19AM (#6055554)
    1. This is only going to help drive down cell phone prices, helping to make land lines obsolete once again. (This was likely to happen eventually anyway, right?) If the article is right and you can forward your conversations to any IP address (at an extra cost), the primary advantage cells have are mobility, such is the case now. Until, that is, when you think about wireless solutions and VoIP. Mmmmm...DHCP + VoIP :)

    2. A brief search of the web suggests VoIP can be more secure [nwfusion.com] than traditional telephony. To what extent will government fight this? Effectively having an SSH tunnel to the other caller wouldn't be appreciated by the gov't given the present modus operandi of the US.

    3. VoIP is certainly a logical progression, and I don't see the big telcos going out of business soon. Where I live, there are just a few DSL providers but only one company (SBC) owns all the wires into the area. Their only real competitor is cable TV whom they are fighting tooth and nail to gain marketshare. I imagine access to wireless frequencies has very little competition (think: 802.11), but will there need to be legislation to keeping it open?
  • The French telephone network has been entirely packet switched since at least 1968. Oh, well, America gets there in the end...
  • I wonder if this is related to the comercial I saw this morning with sprint now selling pcs laptop cards for wireless internet connectivity.

  • Hidden Agenda (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gr8_phk ( 621180 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @08:16AM (#6056061)
    For you conspiracy buffs. Short term, VOIP requires more bandwidth for the same voice quality due to the overhead. What it does allow is variable bit rate compression instead of a fixed 64kbps. Once they start compressing close enough to the home, those with dialup will be screwed and switch to DSL or cable. Or, perhaps something else ;-)

    reading /. tends to make me think in this way :-b

  • Doesn't say IP (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ca1v1n ( 135902 ) <snook@noSPam.guanotronic.com> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @09:02AM (#6056443)
    Nowhere in this article does it say they're doing anything over IP. If I had to take a shot in the dark, I'd guess they were using something like ATM, which has all sorts of wonderful properties for real-time communication, and more closely resembles circuit switching (in the good ways) than any kind of IP connection. I've heard rumors to the effect that IPv6 allows for some of these properties, but no form of IP will ever do what ATM does, for lots of very good reasons.

    I think Telus is nuts to use IP. I hope they succeed, but I still think they're nuts.
    • more closely resembles circuit switching (in the good ways) than any kind of IP connection.

      You haven't heard of MPLS I take it? It's pretty cool technology. Basically, if you set up an IP cloud with MPLS-aware routers, then you can use this network for standard packet-switched communication, or you can establish (in real-time) "virtual circuits" through the network for high speed, low-latency communication. Thus, you get the best of both the packet switch and circuit switched worlds.

      I won't bother de

  • Background info (Score:3, Informative)

    by vestus ( 186946 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @09:12AM (#6056530)
    See Nortel UEMG9000 [nortelnetworks.com] for info.
    I used to work on this, and can say that its quite a robust system. Runs about 8000 POTS lines or 2000 xDSL, and also supports DS1 and TDM lines. Backbone is OC3 ATM with other options available. VOIP should be done now/soon but I don't believe Sprint went that route. The system has Echo Cancellation and all the other required perks to ensure good quality.
    Used to.. Anyone need an embedded driver dev in RTP?
  • Cool... I suppose now we can slashdot the phone network!

    My sister have been trying that for years but still no effect :P

  • Wired in 1996 on ATM and IP (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jasn ( 106824 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @11:00AM (#6057765)
    Boy, does this take me back. One of the better articles in Wired magazine's history, in my opinion, was the one on "Netheads vs. Bellheads" [wired.com] highlighting an internal battle at Sprint as a microcosm of a bigger battle of packet-switching vs. circuit-switching. It's long but entertaining and worth it, talking about philosophical differences and ATM and IP.
  • dial 555-3175
    555-3175 contacted, waiting for reply
    Ring... Ring... ... Request timed out.. Ring..
    We're sorry, the customer you dialed connot be reached offline, would you like to connect or remain offline?

    ----
    my question is if your phones crap out and you need to reinstall tcp/ip on it, how do you call tech support?
  • First the backbone goes to a digital packet switched network, with A/D conversion going on when the local telco tries to go outside. Then the local telco goes all digital, with the A/D going on when the copper meets the CO. Next we are going to see A/D happen right at the telephone (already happening with some systems).

    The only logical progression is to pull analog out of the loop completely for the last 1/2" between the phone and the user, bypassing the soon to be obsolete analog audio output "mouth".

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