Hi Giora, and All,
>>>I used IDT computer to phone from the US to Switzerland and the Q. was terrible.<<<
Sorry to hear that, but not surprised one bit.
When using the open Intenret, i.e., in the absence of any special QoS/CoS measures, most VoIP on the International side, IMO, still sucks (as do many domestic instances) and that goes doubly for the inner-continent ones away from the main Atlantic Coastal Gateway cities. They're "terrible," is right. But they will get better. All of this notwithstanding, the announcement still had a great deal of marketing merit, IMO, and that was my point.
There are regions of the globe, including many parts of Europe, that are still supported by 64, 128 and 384 kbps in their main "arterial" routes, in roles where we are now, comparatively speaking, deploying OC-12s and OC-48s (read: ~633 Mbps and ~2.5 Gbps, respectively) here in the States.
With unknown thousands of ISPs even here in the States, there is a fair share of them who are relatively distressed, employing twiddly, little pathetic pipes to the upstream (fractional T-1s, and those who still use bonded 56 k's), who will momentarily, yet undoubtedly, get in the way of VoIP success, I'm sure. That's the way it still works, to this day, on the public Internet. You route through the good and the bad, the fast and the slow, unless you have a service contract with an ISP that permits you to subscribe around this problem, with guarantees. And once you begin to subscribe around it, you begin to pay premiums which begins to eradicate one of the main reasons for plugging your phone set into the Internet in the first place.
The dearth of bandwidth is gradually improving, globally, but overseas it is not changing as quickly as one would imagine, or hope, or need. Also, while I'm at it, the load on the Internet is probably increasing just as fast if not faster than the bandwidth that is being added. Against the tide, I think the analogy is. VPNs with guarantees, intranets, and dedicated IP backbone nets will have a place in the VoIP market place for quite some time, IMO.
Frank Coluccio
some related topics, kind of, in the next post... |
