Mr. C. - you make a great devil's advocate.
Your debating style seems of the academic. I could be way off here, since there was nothing in your profile to indicate you are, or were, from academia.
I have expressed my points to Mr. Pulver's Points. Now you have provided your counterpoints. My observations are merely based on what I see happening in the real world and giving my "informed" opinion from my perspective. Some additional follow up:
1. I agree that B-ISDN is not the way to go. Too cumbersome and unwieldy. I think there will be a circuit switched PSTN and an IP based PSTN that coexist. Over many years of professional experience, I have seen new "ultimate" networks proposed, some built, and hyped as the "full service multimedia network". Guess what? They do not proliferate because of the basic truth that no network is the "best" for every type of service. Companies try to shoehorn everything onto their network and "prove" they provide the other guy's service on their architecture. It usually fails because their network is not optimized for that type of service. Examples: cable companies putting voice (cable phone) on HFC or phone companies putting video on twisted pair networks. They were not designed or optimized to provide these services. Likewise, IP based networks are extremely good at providing some services and optimized for them by design (variable bit rate data for example). They are not so good at providing other types of services (voice for example). Any time you try to shoehorn a service like voice on to a network not optimized for that service - what I have dubbed the "non-natural fit" scenario of network services - you will ultimately lose. The service will be carried on the network that fits it the best (unless of course there is no other network available to carry it).
2. In support of this hypothesis, the recent SPRINT announcement that they were migrating to a full IP based network for all services, including voice, was met with widespread skepticism by analysts. Even insiders at SPRINT, both engineering and management, have publicly stated they do not agree with the direction of the network. They said the assumptions leading to the conclusion were flawed and some have resigned in protest.
3. I do believe there is a place for IP voice. I just don't think it will take over the world, or should for that matter.
4. It is interesting that you find that so many people in the general public, non-technical types, are so interested in the technology that provides their phone service, or Internet, or cable or what have you. I cannot get out of my mind a recent survey of many thousands of people about 2 years ago that asked regular people where the dial tone on their phone comes from. An overwhelming majority - over 75% - said it came from the handset.
Yes, I do believe that people today are more in tune with technical areas. But the bottom line still comes back to how good the service is vs. what they pay and little else. Until that 75% handset number comes down to about 5%, I won't believe anything else. |
