The last mile to me is PSTN, you're right. That'll change soon, too.
But contrary to what you've stated, I do believe that most evolving VoIP ventures are depending almost entirely on the PSTM for the administration of their services, and for their on/off-ramp capabilities. The IP component, in most of these cases, simply replaces the transport medium between the large end-office switches which are inherently PSTN in nature, as are the long distance SS7 data bases they depend on to get from here to there.
That's how I see it. For the time being, anyway. This is how all of the larger and more successful players [ITXC, ibasis, RSL, and the like] are able to boast that their services are phone to phone.
They're using the PSTN for all but the "middle miles." Long, and 'stupid,' miles, these middle miles are, but passive in nature, comparably speaking.
Completing calls over these stupid middle-mile links still depends on the "intelligence" within the PSTN to tell them where to "point." It's not particularly to my liking that this is how it's evolving, but those are the facts, as I see them. Lesser forms of PC-to-whatever 'net telephony may also be making a dent, and here's where the true avoidance of the PSTN can take place.
But thus far, no one (at least not here, domestically) has been able to harness this form of telephony into anything where they can make any money, or gain a large enough following to enable any to any connectivity with dependable services. And so it goes... |
