Subscribe to the Free Print Edition!
Celebrating 25 Years

GCN Home > 06/06/06 web stories

The VOIP revolution

By William Jackson, GCN Staff

CHICAGO—IP is inevitable. The vendors of software, hardware and services at this week’s GlobalComm trade show agree that in the not-too-distant future IP will be the dominant transport mechanism for voice.

“Voice over IP is making steady progress,” said Jim Webster, director of software technologies for Digium Inc. of Huntsville, Ala. “Within five years the majority of PBXs will be using VOIP.”

The number of VOIP ports being sold outpaced traditional, time-division multiplexing phone ports for the first time last year. Most of those are not yet in actual production, however. They were bought for future proofing or were just a standard feature included in the IP switch. But as existing telephone equipment reaches the end of its supported life, it is only a matter of time before carriers and enterprises will be forced to move voice traffic to IP, whether they want to or not.

“Sooner or later, TDM products are not going to be available—period,” said Kerry Shih, CEO of SyncVoice Communications Inc. of Costa Mesa, Calif.

That does not mean that traditional phone service will disappear any time soon.

“Hybridization is going to go on ad-infinitum,” Shih said. “But sooner or later you are going to have to figure out how to do it.”

Of course, these and other vendors exhibiting their products on the show floor have a vested interest in your moving to VOIP. But there are valid business and technical reasons for making the move.

First of all there are the savings. Carriers are looking for cost savings in terminating voice calls, said Baruch Sterman, CEO of Kayote Networks Corp. of Passaic, N.J. The cost of moving data across a domestic IP connection is about one tenth the cost of pushing traditional voice, Sterman said.

There also are the savings for enterprises in eliminating a separate voice network and associated equipment. Sylantro Systems Corp. of Campbell, Calif., offers application feature servers for PBXs hosted by service providers so that enterprises do not have to buy and maintain their own. With the advent of broadband network connections, copper lines for voice no longer are the precious commodities that made the PBX an attractive piece of customer premises equipment, said Sylantro CEO Pete Bonee. Think of it as taking the “private” out of private branch exchange.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, Hardware, Web Strategies



GCN Popup