Mike,
I don't get WSJ, but the world is a packet world today. all the telephone backhauls in the world are packet right now. ATM packets have been the rule for more than 10 years. the CDMA radio is really just a great packet modem which just happens to have a very good voice thing on the front to make it into a telephone. The real GEM for digtial systems is the digital part. trouble is that most people are focused on voice, since this digital thing just got here in the last 10 years when the PC got big and the internet got going. If you look back at the growth of both of these in the last 5 years and try to project that same growth for the next 5 years, it is hard to imagine what we will have as our day to day carry-around thing.
IF everyone was using packet and we got your phone hooked up to a packet world, then you can exchange anything with most anything by means of something called an Interworking Function (IWF). the only thing that varies here is the speed of them. But you can get your phone to talk internet, phone packets, voice packets, video packets, etc. Just get the right encoder and packet IWF and your hooked up.
Behind the switches in phone systems are giant packet routers, such as T1's, T3, ATMs, Frame relays, etc. |
