A few days ago, I took a phone interview for the local newspaper. The reporter, who was certainly no tech geek, seemed
very interested, and perhaps even excited, by the idea of Internet Telephony. He was happy to learn that, yes, Vonage
really can save you some serious dough on your monthly phone bill (so can Packet8 and a host of other providers).
As I expected, he questioned me about the quality of VoIP services. He was under the impression that VoIP-based
phone service didn't (and couldn't) sound as good as traditional phone service. Not surprisingly, he was taken
aback when I revealed, at the conclusion of our twenty-minute call, that he'd been speaking to me via my VoIP phone
service.
This got me thinking. We IP communications engineers, bloggers, and avant garde technology geeks
reside on the cutting edge, confident in our favored technologies, certain that our ideas about the greater
technological good will prevail.
But are we missing the mark? Are we not sensitive enough to the true
challenges facing our little revolution? How is the world going to be transformed into a place where the is no
more PSTN, and the global voice infrastructure is--exclusively--IP based?
To address these questions, I've
fashioned a list of the top ten issues that I see as counter-affecting the movement to an IP-based global
infrastructure.
1. Disbelief about pricing and features
Consumers, especially
fickle, middle-class consumers and those that are *ahem* older, seem to have a hard time believing that you can
actually lower your voice service cost and get a more feature-complete service offering by switching to Voice over
IP. We, as the thought leaders in this industry, can deal with these problems with better marketing, better
brand alignment (why doesn't eBay slap its name up there next to the Skype logo?), and better product evangelism.
2. Uncertainty about security
Perception is reality. Even if the security of VoIP services
is indeed somewhat better than that of traditional land-line services, it takes a lot to convince a skeptical consumer
that something new can actually be more secure than the tried and true. There has been a sort of inferred
connection between Voice over IP services and identity theft which I, as a networking guy, don't really *get*.
It's easier to look over your shoulder at the supermarket checkout than it is to try to sniff your (encrypted)
signaling packets from a MacGyver-type connection to the local cable company's data pedestal. But, like I said,
perception is reality.
3. The question of E911 and government interference
This is more of a real problem than a purely perceptual one. Setting aside the lawsuits lodged against Vonage last year
due to failed 911 calls, there needs to be an "out of court" and "out of Congress" consensus on the
matter of E911. NENA has taken steps toward this concensus. But
industry-wide acceptance is still a ways off, and that's leaving Skype out of the equation. Regulating Skype into
E911 compliance will be a slippery affair, at best. So, the private sector needs a unified voice. That's about all
politicians will listen to. Otherwise, the mandate that gets legislated will
suck.
4. Uninformed-ness about VoIP technology use
Getting back into
the realm of the perceived, there seems to be this idea that, in order to use Vonage or services like it, you need to
connect your phones to your computer, or somehow use your computer to facilitate calls--kind of like Skype or
Gizmo. The first person who expressed this misunderstanding to me was my mother. The second person was the
reporter I spoke to on the phone. And I know I've heard it from others, even informed folks like the distance learning
engineer at the local community college, whom I chatted with at a funeral a few weeks ago. Today's VoIP telephone
service marketeers need to do a better job of making the point that all you need is broadband, and the ATA does all the
work.
5. Difficulty in usage & hook up
Basic problems that disenchant
mainstream consumers from VoIP telephone service will get worse as more and more people try Internet phone
services. The two basic problems I'm thinking of are:
a. Some VoIP service providers have dial-plans
that force you to dial eleven digits even in situations when the call is in a local exchange and would ordinarily only
require seven digits. Sounds minor, but this is a big deal. Let's not forget how finicky consumers are!
b. It's still too difficult to
connect all the phones in your home--or office--to an Internet phone provider. While some companies offer wireless
phone "systems" to address this issue (like Packet8 with their Uniden offering), the traditional Bells have
the upper-hand here. They have service technicians that can perform the hookups you need. I see this as a huge
challenge. As a networking guy and somebody who doesn't mind wires, electrical tape, and snippers, my whole house is
hooked to VoIP, but what about everybody else?
6. Paranoid media coverage
This has surfaced only recently. The mainstream media, and even the technology media (to some degree) has gotten
carried away with the idea of VoIP spam, what people are calling "SPIT'. Early on in my blogging for
Weblogs Inc., I even got sucked into the hype. But potential (not actualized) problems such as SPIT are often
flagged with such a sense of
urgency that consumers get the jitters, and media recommends the "wait and see" approach. This isn't good
for the revolution. Lesson to VoIP marketeers: communicate early and often with the mainstream media.
7. The issue of network neutrality
There's just not enough hours in the day to explore all
angles of the network neutrality
issue. High-end content providers (like IPTV investors) want to divide the Internet into two or more service
classes--one for "fast" services like IP television, and one for "slow" services like the ordinary
web. Sounds good, right? Well, not exactly. You see, the people who will soon be purveying IPTV (you guessed it--the
Bells) will be able to use this two-tier architecture to marginalize content providers who they see as competitors.
They've already identified Google as one company they see as exercising too much control over content. Vonage and
other VoIP providers aren't far behind and the black list. I stand for network neutrality (that is, keeping all
applications, regardless of vendor or type of traffic) in a single tier of service, with best-effort delivery.
The telcos have floated the assertion that BitTorrent and other bandwidth hogs are in fact clogging the Internet, but
these ideas have outrightly dispelled as false by many people in the know. Today's bandwidth is plentiful, and
tomorrow's bandwidth can be plentiful. The whole idea of a two-tiered Internet seems to me to illustrate the Bell's
desire to control more of the Internet than they already do (which is the lion's share), as a means of boxing out
challenges to their revenue streams. Over time, I have come to believe that the answer to accomodating new,
bandwidth-heavy services is to create more bandwidth on the Internet. I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
bandwidth is not a resource for which there is a limited supply. All you need for more bandwidth is more fiber in the
ground. And this is arguably cheaper than trying to enforce multiple classes of service over the public Internet.
8. (Non-existant) Vendor interop
This is a problem created and nurtured by the VoIP
industry itself. Skype users can't call Packet8 users (unless they dial out through the PSTN---and what does that do for
the revolution?? nothing!), and Cisco CallManager VoIP systems, at least until recently, didn't work with Avaya phones.
The end result? Limits on consumer use of available products and service. Unless you dominate the industry the
way Apple dominates the digital music industry, it just doesn't work. Interoperability between products and
service is paramount to the transformation of the global voice network. Kudos to SIPPhone for equipping their Gizmo Project software with the ability to interact with other SIP providers'
services. The rest of the industry should be following their example.
9. Bad enterprise attitudes
about infrastructure upgrades
A few days ago, I was talking to a top infrastructure executive at
one of the largest manufacturing firms in the midwest. We got on the subject of transitioning his highly-distributed
global network to a unified, or converged, footprint. This means combining his voice and data applications into a
single logical schema, using common network technologies (most notable, IP), to do everything on his network. I
suggested that he consider switching to VoIP. His response? "The wiring in our building is managed by the phone
company, and we're not going to impede that relationship," or something very similar. Now, the parameters of
a voice convergence project may not actually be there in his firm, but his enterprise's attitude towards
progress in IP communications was disappointing. Unfortunately, with the profit-motive ever in the mind of today's
decision-making executives, many of whom are people who, yes, think that you need a PC to use Vonage, the negative
enterprise attitude towards VoIP is indeed the prevailing one. This has got to change. If the largest
private networks in the world can't converge, how can the largest public ones?
10. Genuine quality
of service issues
Finally, we look at the challenge of quality of service. In an enterprise
setting, QoS is relatively easy to achieve, if the architects of the networked voice solution can convince the capital
spenders to purchase the right equipment in the right quantities. But, in residential scenarios, where service
consumers aren't "spending other people's money", QoS is not technically possible to guarantee. This is
because the companies that provide network connectivity to the last mile, such as cable operators and DSL carriers,
refuse to enforce QoS rules that would benefit their competitors in the VoIP industry--folks like Packet8, Vonage, and
Broadvoice. One Canadian telco has even gone as far as charging extra for QoS guarantees. Absurd. Even
still, there are certain things the larger independent VoIP providers could be doing to at least improve last-mile
QoS. For one, they should start hocking
broadband routers that implement queuing, a common practice for improving voice quality on a one-hop link such as
your cable or DSL connection.
Ted Wallingford is an advanced networking
consultant. His web site is http://www.macvoip.com.
Mini-white paper: Overcoming cultural challenges to the VoIP revolution
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. I don't understand why you don't think #10 and #7 are related. Why would an ISP try to enforce QoS (which is a non-trivial implementation and management task) and not charge for it?
Looking at QoS in my enterprise (10,000 tech savvy users) we're constantly worried that our QoS policy will be circumvented by our user population, made to do things that are not in the global org's best interest. If a user can mark his own traffic, how can I be sure his marks align with my goals (or his neighbors?) and that he's not putting DSCP EF on his Bittorrent traffic? If I mark his traffic, I have to be able to identify the apps he's using.. so I might catch his company-issued Avaya phone, but not his brought-from-home Gizmo account (that looks like a long HTTPS session, and not like VoIP at all). It's a full time job.
Within the corporation, I charge for it. (The salary of the person who provides the service is essentially a load on every shareholder.) If I were running a for-profit network (and not essentially a cost center w/i my company) you can bet the end user would be aware of the costs of differentiated service, probably in the form of an added line item on his bill, or at least a bold-print feature on our marketing glossy.
Posted at 2:11PM on Apr 10th 2006 by Jeremy Wadhams
1. Nice article. Very nice indeed. You have addressed the issue very well. I agree with you totally that one of the main challenges behind the spreading of VOIP is to change the mindset of the people. It wil take time but I think the best way is to write more about it. The more VOIP will get coverage, ordinary users will know about it and even out of curiousity use it. VOIP has one thing for it- the pricing factor. Every one in the world wants to talk cheaply- especialy to their friends and relatives living in a foreign country. That is why, I can see bright and brighter prospect for VOIP
Posted at 8:01AM on Apr 10th 2006 by Razib Ahmed