IP Telephony at Gizmos, Inc: Toolkit: PC Workshop

Convergence is the polite term for what's happening. It's a period of transition when we try to have it both ways, the old way and the new way.

For voice conversations, the old way is called POTS, plain old telephone system. Ma Bell is a monopoly that sets up a copper-wire analog circuit for every telephone call. The sound travels back and forth through that circuit in waves analogous to the waves that come out of your mouth. The calls are priced according to the tin can model: the farther away the tin cans, the louder you have to shout, thus the more expensive it must be.

The new way is called IP telephony. Ma Bell has competition. The copper is replaced by glass fiber. Your voice is sampled 44,000 times per second and a number is assigned to each sample. The numbers are compressed and broken into packets. The packets are sent out through the Internet and reassembled at the other end and turned back into an analog wave that a human ear can hear. This whole process happens at around two-thirds the speed of light, which makes the difference between halfway around town and halfway around the Earth negligible and thus disrupts the tin-can model of revenue generation.

Fifteen years ago, the electrical power companies had an opportunity. Every wall socket in the U.S. was connected to every other wall socket through the power grid. But the electrical companies weren't in the data transmission business and who knew the Internet would get this big? (That's a joke. Lots of folks did but they weren't the executives responsible for the power company's next-quarter profits.)

The telephone companies have been dragged into convergence reluctantly and slowly. And inexorably. Their networks were stupid at the ends and smart in the middle.

What's all this talk about "media convergence," this dumb industry idea that all media will meld into one, and we'll get all of our news and entertainment through one box? Few contemporary terms generate more buzz—and less honey. Consider this column a primer on the real media convergence, because it's on the verge of transforming our culture as profoundly as the Renaissance did.

A reference guide to all things VOIP

This Wiki covers everything related to VOIP, software, hardware, service providers, reviews, configurations, standards, tips & tricks and everything else related to voice over IP networks, IP telephony and Internet Telephony.

With Internet phone services signing up thousands of new customers a day, telecom industry observers are beginning to question how well the old local phone companies will defend themselves against a growing throng of competitors.

So far, cable companies and firms like Vonage have only nibbled at the edges of the local telephone market with voice over Internet Protocol service, or VOIP, winning about 250,000 customers.

But as more households sign up for broadband Internet service, and larger players such as AT&T Corp. unveil their VOIP service, executives and analysts see the threat to the Baby Bells rising.

"This is about choice," said John Rego, chief financial officer of Vonage, in a meeting with investors on Wednesday. "The competition right now is the 187 million wireline phones controlled by the (local phone companies), and that's what we're going after."

Cable giants will edge out VoIP specialists as leaders in selling telephone service over cable broadband this year, according to a new study.

The UK's major telco, British Telecommunications, plans to gradually shut down its traditional circuit-switched telephone network in favor of Internet Protocol (IP) technology. The new multibillion-dollar system, which is expected to be operational for most of BT's 28 million customers by 2008, will involve electronic and computer-system changes rather than construction work (such as digging up roads or pulling down phone lines). BT executive Paul Reynolds says that the new program "will deliver our vision of a converged, multimedia world where our customers can access any communications service from any device, anywhere -- at broadband speed. ...

"We believe we can provide these services over IP at the same or better than the high standards of quality and reliability people expect from the PSTN today. These calls are not going over the internet. They will be carried on our dedicated high capacity IP networks which also carry data and broadband services.

"Adopting IP as the common transport method is both cost efficient and facilitates technology, systems, product and service convergence. BT's vision is that voice will be one of many applications run over an IP network in our 21st century network world."

At the moment, we're in a period of transition. What we used to know as three or four networks -- telephone, radio, TV, cable TV -- are converging into one data network. This packet-switched network is much more efficient. The carrying capacity of glass fiber is almost unlimited. The network is stupid in the middle; it moves ones and zeros and doesn't care how smart humans experience them at either end.

Thus other industries whose products and services can also be packetized -- book, magazine, and newspaper publishing and music distribution chief among them -- are also being dragged into convergence very reluctantly and very slowly. What about the advertising industry that counted the copies? The trucking industry that hauled around the paper? The schools that gathered professors around the libraries?

Their business models are being blown to bits, yet they're still worried about next quarter's profits or the way it has "always" been done. The backlash is fascinating to watch as the dinosaurs waddle off to the tarpits fretting about copyright violations and about students who surf the Web in class while they're supposed to be paying attention to a boring lecture.

What is it?

A voice conversation for which one or both voice signals travel on a packet-switched network is called IP telephony (Internet Protocol).

The next phenomenon from the people who brought you KaZaA. Just like KaZaA, Skype uses P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you to other users – not to share files this time, but to talk for free with your friends.

The technology is extremely advanced - but super simple to use... You’ll be making perfect quality free phone calls to your friends in no time!

2003 was a remarkable year in the US for voice over the internet (VoIP). If you needed a label for the events of the year, "Collapse of Denial" would be a good one -- after a long period of relative inaction, the FCC and the state regulators are suddenly pushing hard for a regulatory framework. The question is no longer whether voice is going to become an internet application, but when. ...

Complicating this de facto Plan A, however, is the fact that VoIP isn't a service, it's just a set of protocols, meaning that competitors don't have to set themselves up as upstart phone companies to deploy VoIP. If Plan A is "Replace the phone system slowly and from within," Plan B is far more radical: "Replace the phone system. Period."

Where Vonage and a number of the other VoIP startups present themselves to the customer as phone companies, emulating the incumbents they are challenging, you can think of Plan B as the Skype plan. Skype isn't taking on the trappings of a phone company; instead, it offers free two-way voice conversations over the internet (they aren't phone calls, for the obvious reason) between users who have downloaded and installed software onto their computer. (Other versions of Plan B include instant messaging clients that let users talk, not just type.)

Built on top of the industry's highly successful cable modem infrastructure, PacketCable networks will use Internet protocol (IP) technology to enable a wide range of multimedia services, such as IP telephony, multimedia conferencing, interactive gaming, and general multimedia applications.

From the network's point of view, it's wireless. From your point of view, it's mobile. It seems like a telephone but Internet telephony sends the voice in little digital packets, not as an analog frequency. Once you're receiving data packets, why not get your email and news headlines, too.

Internet phone calling is poised for a major boost as cable giants get into the game, but some of the biggest players are holding back.

While still just a trickle, early defectors to voice over IP (VOIP) represent the vanguard in a trend that some analysts believe could soon roil the communications industry.

Independent VOIP providers such as Vonage and 8x8 are beginning to steal consumers from tradition phone operators with flat-rate VOIP plans that cost between $20 and $40 a month for local and long distance calls.

Skills

adapting to new wireless devices that are already obsolete or you wouldn't be able to afford them

Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
-- Ambrose Bierce (right)

Tools

We'll use whatever comes bundled with your laptops unless we don't like it, in which case we'll download something else.

The easiest and most effective way to talk via the internet. Simply input your partner's IP address and you'll be talking FREE to anyone, anywhere in the world in no time at all. Gphone also allows regular type chatting, file transfers, and even has an answering machine option.

Wireless

The keys here are low-power radio transmission and grids of cells (areas of transmission). Low-power radio transmission requires low-power batteries, which means low weight and small size of the devices carrying the batteries, speakers, and microphones.

Then it's a question of bandwidth. In metaphorical terms, how thick are the pipes, how wide is the highway, how deep is the stream? How much data can we get all at once? Text and voice will come first. Then images, which can be either prerecorded or live.

Third generation (3G) wireless is designed for high-speed multimedia data and voice. Its goals include high-quality audio and video and advanced global roaming, which means being able to go anywhere and automatically be handed off to whatever wireless system is available (in-house phone system, cellular, satellite, etc.).

What are the implications? Watch the horizontal integration of the delivery industries. If AOL had merged with Verizon or Microsoft, that would have been vertical integration. Instead, AOL bought Time-Warner -- horizontal integration.

The leading provider of news content for and about wireless technology, MBizCentral opens the gateway to the mobile economy: ... wireless strategies, mergers and acquisitions, investments, the latest applications and hardware news, ... stock reports, columnists, daily e-mail newsletters and wireless delivery options.

Mobile

The technology and economy convergences around wireless are one thing. What about the personal and cultural convergences around mobile? Always-on real-time access, aka aorta.

The personal convergence is how you navigate the Evernet to live, work, learn, and play, the changes in the wetware, as it's called, the neural network inside your cranium.

The cultural convergence will come from collaboration, the synergy of all the personal convergences. We will have inexpensive tools to make, store, annotate, and quickly share content.

Today's teens are going to have to be running the state and university education departments before the schools will change, meaning that the following generation will start the cultural convergence in earnest.





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modified: August 15, 2003 by Douglas Anderson http://RicciStreet.net/gizmos/toolkit/collaboration/telephony.htm

Telephony

The PC Workshop

Stay tuned. We're on the verge.

What is it?

Skills

Tools

Wireless

Mobile