AHhaha, that's right, upgrading to IP is very inexpensive comparatively speaking. But the trick here is not so much in the cost of the infrastructure, as it is the quality of delivery. In particular and in no trivial way, the quality of the calls placed, and the administrative problems that may ensue at the billing and operations maintenance levels. It goes beyond ATHM or T/TCOMA's proprietary implementations.
From a recent press release:
>>AT&T announced yesterday that it will spend an additional $2 billion this year to more quickly upgrade TCI's cable systems to handle packages of TV, local phone and Internet services. It will offer those services in 10 markets this year to gauge demand for them.... Residents in Arlington, Dallas, Bedford, Colleyville, Euless, Flower Mound, Grand Prairie and Plano will be among the first nationally to have access to the new service, as test markets.<<
I know that I spend a lot of time seemingly harping on the VoIP space, but it is now quite pronounced that T is staking the entirely of its future in the local residential service sector on its ability to deploy VoIP effectively over cable systems.
What issues are not readily apparent? To paraphrase a noted poster, almost a celebrity here in SI, "The number of things that are not apparent in deploying VoIP are infinite."
I don't want to get long-winded here, forsooth, not me, and I don't want you accusing me of being an SI addict, so I'll keep it short and leave you with one thought for the time being. And that is:
Once a company agrees to deploy VoIP, it's not only the end users of the local company that are affected by the pluses and minuses of its delivery, but they are the paying customers of remote system operators and telcos, as well, who will bear the brunt of any shortcomings or benefits that may ensue.
That is, a call placed from my BEL Nortel Class 5 Switch in Brooklyn via AT&T to a VoIP kludge in Kansas will only be as good as the quality of the worst link. In other words, I will have to pay for that call whether it is toll quality or not.
This is a huge leap, dare I say risk, to be taking by any company, much less by T, the heretofore most conservative of them all. Which is what makes it especially intriguing to me.
And once a company enters into this space, it is going to be difficult for them to ignore the huge cost advantages of interoperating with other companies who are providing 'pure IP Telephony' (as opposed to gateway variants through class 5 end office ILEC switches). And it will likewise be difficult to assign blame when problems of congestion or dropped calls, or whatever, arise.
I'm long on VoIP and other packetized voice techs, in the sense that I'm not at this time ordinarily confident about its maturity near term, rather interim, and long term. Because I think that it will take some time before these voice alternatives can be integrated seamlessly into the PSTN, and then beyond into next gen architectures, whereby both the local net population AND pluralistic nets can benefit together at the network layer.
VoIP is still a very young and immature technology at this time, which is what intrigues me the most about all of these stated directions by T. I have to think that the folks out in ATT Labs in NJ have something worth betting the proverbial farm on. I'm not saying that it wont work... Rather, I'm saying that it will be fascinating to watch them pull it off.
---
Now, I only have one more reply before the cash register gets closed...
Regards, Frank |
