Karl,
Please, digress at will! I appreciate your pointing out the teledotcom VoIP article.
Getting back to my other reply, I may be forgetting my manners here. I should have addressed the previous reply to you and "All" since I was speaking in generalities. I think you understand that, but just to make sure.
The VoIP article you've cited reads like many of the posts (many of them mine) going back over a year's time in the VoIP thread here in SI. These have recently been reinforced by Jeff Pulver of pulver.com and others (although Jeff has known these facts all along to be sure, and has not hesitated in calling it like it is when called upon) on the thread.
The following part particularly highlights what I mean:
>>On the existing telephone network, a separate Signaling System 7 (SS7) network offers service providers an infrastructure to deliver enhanced services, by delivering call setup and teardown information apart from the actual telephone call. This capability, part of the IN architecture for enhanced services, has no counterpart on the Internet. Both the telecommunications and Internet industries see the need to link the telephone network's SS7 network to the Internet's system of addresses. Only then will service providers be able to offer services that operate over both networks.<<
These points have been made almost nauseatingly clear in the referenced thread, due their repeated appearance there, to the point that it bored even me after a while. I suppose that now that it's become a popular belief, even chic in some circles, it's no longer hard for many to swallow. I can just envision the turnaround now in contemporary wisdom.
The closing paragraph of the article is particularly amusing to me, because last year I called in the engineering folks of SUMMA and XLSW, among others in their class as well as many in the heavy metal and router domains, to test their plans wrt VoIP.
None of them at the time had anything on their agendas except for LU, and CSCO. And I only found out about CSCO's plans later.
NT was mum as were others. ASND and COMS responded very quickly with their respective platform designs, but they were futures, but at least they had something on the books.
But the programmable switch manufacturers [SUMA, XLSW, and others of less stature in the industry], were loathe to even discuss it as recently as 14 months ago, for embarrassment due to the fact that they actually had no plans yet, nor were they certain that they even wanted to take such a bold position as even considering such a notion, publicly. I suppose that the SUPERCOM and other trade shows of the fall of '97 had a lot to do with the turn-around in thinking, just as WDM was affected the previous year during the fall shows.
>>The final component revolves around SS7 and enhanced services. Equipment suppliers have been working to bridge SS7 from the telephone network across to the Internet, and they have been doing so with a sense of urgency. "This market is moving, and moving quite quickly," says Summa Four's Carlino. Still, one question remains: How will this convergence take place? A year or two will pass before the answer to that question becomes clear. <<
It might be interesting to note that an up and coming player in this niche [can we still call IP Voice a niche?] is Coyote (COYE), a small startup (or, some would say, reinvented) company that has it its helm one of SUMMA's ex-officer types.
And more to your other point ...
>>Aquistion/Activation/Retention is accomplished by bundling services and products. The key is for the creative marketer to arrive at a unique package that is difficult for the competition to duplicate at any price yet is a "can't do without" package to the consumer. <<
Another fault of mine in my preceding message was that I failed to delineate the market segment that I was referring to. But I guess you realized that I was talking about large enterprises, whereas some of your points can be (and are) focused on the consumer market and everything in between. Bundling of services is easier achieved with small accounts and at the consumer level, where the expertise for doing in house integration doesn't normally exist.
At the big houses, however, it's often an arm-wrestling contest at every meeting with a carrier, with vested interests of incumbent managers and engineering departments on both sides of the table trying to out-engineer each other. It makes for some interesting drama at at times, but I'm sure you already know that. [g]
>> The key is for the creative marketer to arrive at a unique package that is difficult for the competition to duplicate at any price yet is a "can't do without" package to the consumer. <<
Even at the enterprise sector, I happen to agree with you to some extent, although it is more difficult most of the time. If you read between the lines I even implied this, when I stated that the customer should not depend on price alone when making their selection choice of carrier. There are, in fact, strategic benefits that can result if the customer and the carriers agree to some tenets, and those are what I would think you are referring to. Migration plans, extensibility, robustness for disaster recovery, the list goes on.
These are not necessarily something that startups and less endowed carriers can put on the table, however. And therein lies the power of capital and ubiquitous embeddedment, even when it is offset, to some extent, by the presence of legacy platforms. Customers don't only want unlimited bandwidth, they also often make a stronger case for demanding "reliable" bandwidth.
Best Regards, Frank Coluccio
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