Mr Fun
I have responded and you have not addressed the issue.
Fact: LU's telephony architecture, for better or worse, is indeed rooted in the definity product. I never said that this was a bad thing and in fact it is neccessary in the short term since customers are wed to this architecture. Indeed they will not move overnight and this is a huge advantage for LU. The question is how will LU transition when/if multipurpose single line packet based networks to the home become real. Front ending the 5E I don't believe is a long term answer. Maybe I'm wrong, but history has proven otherwise when we look at the data world and how it migrated.
Fact: Going forward the network edge will be and is IP. You are communicating over IP to send your message to this forum as is every other person here. The network core certainly will be protocols other than IP but make no mistake - IP edges is what will rule. So in all due respect, on this point you are flat out wrong.
Mr. Fun, you make the false assumption that the only benefit to IP telephony is to reduce time and cost for adds, moves, and changes. Although IP makes these efforts a snap, the cost benefits are huge - there is no reservation for bandwidth allowing a given trunk to support two to three times more users - that can easily translate into more than a 50% reduction in recurring costs. Add to this reduction in manpower and any enterprise - including those that are "fluid" can benefit significantly quickly paying off the initial outlay. And what a breath of fresh air for the IT department. They don't have to call in the LU technicians on an annual basis for their upgrades forking out $$$ per switch. Mr. Fun, you're in the business - well plugged in. Tell everyone here what an SP forks out for annual maintainance for each 5E.
Fact: Voice on IP is new and not ready for prime time. So we all agree on this. The point of my question is what will occur to the existing paradigm if/when voice on IP is ready to carry mission critical life-line traffic. Voice will then migrate from traditional POT's networks onto IP based nets relagating existing infrastructure obsolete with the one exception being the transport core. Mr. Fun, you pointed out in your last post that carriers like QWST and Level3 have purchased 5E's....and that is true. These carriers did so to cultivate their telephony business - copper currently this the medium of choice for end points for consumers a market which these carriers recently targeted. As users - like you and me - move to intergrated solutions over DSL or Cable two things will happen. POT's growth will wane and with it 5E sales will fall off. Many industry luminaries predict this will occur.
So, although you and Bill c have waived your arms a lot and danced around the issue you in fact have not answered my question nor did I expect you to. The fact is LU's current strategy is rooted in 5E's - it simply has to be. "New world" vendors like Cisco's strategies are not. Therefore these "new world" companies can afford to move faster and attack old world "5e" paradigms and any win is market growth and represents a beach-head for tomorrows networks. If Cisco succeeds in maintaining these beach-heads LU will be forced to move quicker to combat the attack on their traditional market....in doing so leaving their existing 5E based strategy behind and impacting that revenue stream. So, LU will need to backfill this revenue stream with next generation products and services or ? compete against new world multiservice networks with old world 5Es?? Of course there is the position one could take that says new world multiservice nets don't exist yet and that they are unproven and so LU has nothing to worry about. A valid position to take but I don't beleive it's healthy to bet that a competitor will fail on delivering. JMO.
OG
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