re: the 'cost' of a call
Interesting post, Robert, Thanks. Couple of things, briefly.
Cost of calling, in this instance, has already begun to take on attributes other than the direct payout of monetary currencies. Just as in the assessment of "costs" on Internet routes (latency, jitter, congestion, etc.), we now have cost factors associated with the quality of the actual phone call. The cost of the call, in this case, can be viewed almost directly as derivatives of the Internet route metrics, except that the impact of higher, or lower, quality could bear on the outcome of the call, hence its effective costs.
Sometimes these can be traced to the image of the caller, or the tolerance of the receiver, or the ultimate financial consequences associated with "dropped" calls, or the frustration induced by constant call induced annoyances. Conversely, with improvements in quality, these effects can be reversed in the future, as quality and fidelity, as well as compression-enabling broader ranges of frequencies are delivered.
While many of these considerations are subjective ones, and they clearly reside on either side of a dividing line which serves to demarcate business communications/emergency 911 etc., from casual personal comms -- at the two extremes -- these qualities or lack thereof will be the ones that users and organizations must take into account when choosing their next purchase.
Secondly, you may want to re-post your message on the VoIP thread (although, I've always maintained that VoIP will be a crucial part of Last Mile technologies, anyway, as witnessed now by VoDSL and other IP Telephony enhacements on the customer's desktop), since there may be many more eyeballs to be had in the VoIP forum from members who have bookmarked there for this very kind of topic. FWIW.
Subject 17774
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
