FORD: Is VoIP a Success?

By Carl Ford

I shared with some friends the perspective that I have that VoIP is a success.  After all, circuit switching is experiencing "end of life" management by network operators everywhere. However, as a service, VoIP has not really delivered a crushing blow. In the regulatory world, VoIP is part of the existing telecom portfolio. No one includes the innovation that comes to VoIP rightfully from its Computer Telephone Integration history when looking at the technology. Adjunct integrations that use Voice/Web 2.0 technology to deliver dual mode services or provide virtualization to geographic numbers are outside the scope of most discussions about VoIP. 

So can VoIP be considered a success?

Brough Turner of NMS Communications pointed out to me three areas of opportunity for real change that VoIP should be part of in the network. The first is going beyond "Digital POTS."  Many service providers have embraced VoIP for the cost savings of integrating to their IP infrastructure to do nothing more than replicate the PSTN. Cable operators, Vonage and others have built to match what exists--not what could be. Skype has been the best at demonstrating the potential for VoIP and has many interesting adjunct developments with click to dial, conferencing and Internet devices that morph what exists to create what should be.

A second place where VoIP is not living up to its potential is in the world of enterprise PBXs. While Microsoft is pushing for Unified Communication, the majority of the marketplace is still in a walled garden mindset where the IP-PBX vendor you buy from bundles proprietary handsets and has a closed ecosystem of approved devices. Bill Miller of Digium would remind me that Asterisk is another community where through open source the ability to connect to a variety of devices is possible.

Finally, comes the biggest opportunity. Wireless is running to embrace the Internet with broadband services, but using primarily its existing framework. University of Minnesota's Dr. Andrew Odlysko points out that IP has won as the connecting glue because of its flexibility, adaptability to legacy networks and third party development. However, the adaptability to the legacy network is tilted toward the existing infrastructure of the wireless architecture.

It's logical to project that wireless is a market imperative for consumers of the Internet. The data points for this conclusion are the iPhone owners being responsible for over 80 percent of the data browsing on mobile phones and Scandinavia's wideband HSPA services being used to connect laptops.

Just like the Internet usurped the PSTN to have ubiquity and then flipped voice traffic to the point where now almost all long distance calls are on top of the Internet, we can make the case that wireless is going to have the same experience. With ecosystems being built by companies like EBay/Skype, Apple and Google are building ecosystems of developers looking to deliver something more nomadic digital POTS. 

We should see VoIP as part of the mix with better integration of presence and positioning information in a signaling structure beyond SS7.  Whether VoIP is thought of as a service or a function in a service should be irrelevant.  VoIP's future success is everywhere.

Carl Ford is Strategic Advisor and Community Developer for FierceMarkets. His words of wisdom can be found at www.carlford.net.