Mike, the analyses begin posted by you and Denver get better all the time. They are appreciated. I have a question for both you and Denver.
Re: "Best of all, in what I think will be a pretty nice transisition from circuit-switched to IP telephony."
I am left to wonder just how complete a transition this will actually be. How do you see this unfolding? Do you see this as VoIP, being passed on to a larger VoIP cloud from the CMTS whereupon routing and settlements are processed in a new Internet Telephony realm? In this case I am referring to the elimination of the use of gateways at the first point of collection (the Head End), and the use of VoIP protocols (whatever those are... take your pick, still) all the way.
Or, do you see this as a handoff of voice over IP packets to a telco-fashioned end-office switch, immediately, through the use of a gateway, upon receipt of the customer payload at the first head end as it is peeled off of the HFC at the CMTS?
In the latter case, conversely to the first, VoIP gateways a la VOCL, e.g., or internal to the CMTS itself, would be used, and the primary advantage in this scenario would be to optimize scarce upstream bandwidth resources on the HFC distribution plant, due to the present up-and-downstream channel schemes being used. TIA.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
