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To: Keith Feral who wrote (7104)	9/6/2000 5:39:32 PM
From: EJhonsa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

For those that want the direct source, here's the link to the announcement: Message 14335967 It seems like an interesting development, but I'm left thinking that it'll still be a while before a wireless carrier actually choses to do a large-scale implementation of voice-over-IP. As it is, call quality is a major differentiating point that carriers try to push over their competitors. Dropped calls are a part of everyday life for all carriers, and with so many complaints about QoS on the part of subscribers as it is, and with 3G set to provide some tremendous capacity gains, I'd be surprised to see a large line forming for this bandwagon at this point in time. Also, even if a carrier uses networking equipment with advanced QoS classification and prioritization software so as to better handle VoIP traffic, there's also the issue of the QoS techniques employed by the equipment used by the operators of the optical backbones that these packets will inevitably have to go on to reach the point where they reach the PSTN. If these backbones don't use equipment that supports high-quality QoS techniques, then the point at which a loss of transmission quality takes place simply gets passed further down the line. An interesting comment in that press release came from Ericsson, which discussed the trend towards "all-IP networks." This could explain why Japan Telecom in particular would be interested in wireless VoIP: unlike CDMA carriers upgrading to cdma2000 and GSM carriers moving towards W-CDMA, being a PDC operator, they're going to have to build an entire 3G core from scratch; and lacking the nearly unlimited resources that its main PDC rival DoCoMo has to handle this task, the concept of an all-IP network has to sound alluring to them. Still, for the reasons described earlier, I think it's best to take this announcement for what it is, just a test, and not count on such an architecture being deployed on a mass scale when Japan Telecom, or anyone else for that matter, initially rolls out with 3G services within the next couple of years. Eric