TELECOM Digest Editor <ptownson@massis.csail.mit.edu> wrote:
> ... VOIP, which frankly, I believe is the telecom 'wave of the
> future'.
I hate to be a party pooper, it seems some basic questions remain to
be answered about VOIP. Such as:
1) The mainstream press (plus my own experience) describe VOIP sound
quality as _almost_ as good as a regular landline phone. When will it
be 100% as good or better as landline 100% of the time?
2) The mainstream press says VOIP reliability still has a way to go,
and is also dependent on the quality of the broadband connection one
happens to be using. In data communications, it is very common to
encounter "bunch-ups" when a lot of people just happen to hit their
'enter' key all at once; when this happens, there is a delay. For
data transmission or internet use that is tolerable, but not on a
voice conversation. It was like this in the early days of telephony
when long distance lines were very limited and callers had to be
queued for an available trunk. How and when will VOIP address this
issue so that the reliability of VOIP is equal or better than landline
100% of the time?
3) The fact remains that VOIP usually needs the Baby Bells to deliver
most of their calls. Despite what the FCC says, the Baby Bells are
burdened with regulatory obligations, such as accomodating deadbeats
and providing service to every location. I can't help but suspect the
VOIP providers would not be interesting in running their cables or
even providing service to high crime slum areas that the Baby Bells do
support. Further, the Baby Bells have to have human service reps to
handle customer complaints, ironically some coming from the
possibility that VOIP providers failed to provide proper ANI and
innundated customers with campaign calls (as recently described in
this newsgroup).
There have been some posts here recently complaining about long waits
for service for some VOIP providers. It's one thing to be a novel new
technology serving techo-geeks who can live with glitches. I suspect
the high volume campaign callers didn't care if a percentage of calls
failed to go through. But as the service expands into many people
depending on the phone to make a living, such problems won't be
tolerated. In my humble opinion, VOIP has a long way to go, further
than its proponents recognize.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So, there are a few shortomings still
to be dealt with on VOIP. No one has ever claimed it was perfect;
far from it. But the trade offs are worth considering. Like the
Walmart versus the downtown store argument we had; some people may
prefer its inexpensive cost and flexibilty over some of the
traditional telecom 'advantages'. PAT]
Lisa Hancock (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com)