VoIP will explode into widespread deployment across North American this year, changing the way telephone calls are made and received more radically than any technology that’s been put into place in the last 100 years. At the same time, VoIP will bring cost efficiencies for carriers and new services and conveniences for consumers.

The new technology will eventually dominate what has been – and promises to continue to be for many years to come. This is thanks to the embedded infrastructure of existing telecommunications carriers – a lucrative $80 billion annual voice services market. Because RBOCs and ILECs have a vested interest in maintaining existing infrastructure for switched telephony services, it’s unlikely that VoIP will transform the way the phone industry runs overnight.

It is, however, likely that VoIP’s attractiveness for both carriers and consumers will drive large-scale residential deployments starting this year. In fact, it’s already happening. Service providers like Vonage, Packet8 and Net2Phone are riding on broadband networks. Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) like Verizon and its brethren all have announced plans for VoIP migration in the near term. Interexchange Carriers (IXCs) like AT&T, Sprint and MCI are eyeing or entering the space. And, of course, cable operators are standing by to bring in their own versions of voice services running on their broadband networks. Even fixed broadband wireless providers and their cousins in the wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) space are eyeing voice services over IP networks.

In short, while small in comparison to the existing telecommunications infrastructure, the residential VoIP audience will be a huge change compared to any competing voice technology that has happened in the last century.

Let’s first concede that VoIP technology is, to put it in technical terms, “fully baked.” After some initial start-up kinks, transmitting voice over broadband IP has become commonplace in the transport space, with carriers and service providers packetizing voice into data and carrying it across IP networks internationally to avoid the costs and difficulties of using the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and to give end users lower charges primarily for long distance calls.

Network Lessons

These early network activities have provided vendors, carriers and service providers with some hard lessons. First and foremost, not every IP network or technology is configured the same. Simply put, each IP provider uses different technology and speaks a different language. When it comes time to hand off between two IP networks, that language becomes a barrier, either breaking down the data transferal or requiring translation devices inserted into the network end points.

Initially many carriers translated the IP packets back to time division multiplex (TDM) voice streams which were understood by the connecting network and then re-packetized those streams for transmission on the new networks. This was not only time-consuming, but expensive, thus session controllers were developed and inserted into key parts of the network to handle the transfer of data from one network –using nativeIP, but taking care of all the issues related to the demarc point. 

Next page >>

page 1 of 4