[continued from post # 2028 ]
Of course I should also mention that the larger carriers aren't letting any grass grow under their feet when it comes to preparing for VoIP as well. They will hedge in this respect for the time being, I believe, and possibly pursue it with full vigor at some point as its benefits become apparent AND/OR if something else that suits them better doesn't prove in first.
They will need to do this for interoperability reasons, and to secure the inherent benefits as they become obvious from the native capabilities that VoIP allows. IP, or ATM, probably matters not. Through DSP technology, we will likely see each of these in their native forms able to adapt to the other on the fly, anyway. The latter is already the case in cellular and pcs system designs, where handoffs and protocol compression translations are the rule of the day. No reason why this shouldn't be adapted for low bit rate terrestrial wireline systems as well.
Whether it's pure VoIP as we know it today (how's that for an oxymoron?), or some co-mutation of ATM and IP voice, as the IETF and the other consortia and forums[a] unveil it, the next generation will undoubtedly be a compression-enabled low bit rate voice delivery system, and the larger carriers will surely be in the forefront with its deployment once they agree, once and for all, on a set of standards. For better or for worse.
Finally, I'd like to point out that the foregoing here and in the previous part to this message are my opinions as they relate to public switched environments (PSTN and the GSTN, each as they relate to international direct distance dialing or IDDD), and not private enterprise networks. Those [intranets] are up for grabs, since most of them will elect to go with a single provider, or two providers with proven interoperability, and compatibility will not likely be the issue that it is in the public sector.
Regards, Frank C.
ps - I notice that rocky placed a Disney message in between my two messages, in case you are wondering where the other half is. |
