And some wish to have a VOIP and a PSTN local presence. Why into use a PSTN /VOIP automatic switch so that you can mange both services from a single handset, answering machine etc?
Marco
Written by: Jason Canon
> Peach ePublishing LLC
> VoIP Phone Home?
> The movie Extra Terrestrial (ET) coined the phrase "phone home" and
> each year American's look for more cost effective ways to do just
> that. The past 10 years have seen the development and growing
> popularity of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies to
> achieve cost savings over the traditional circuit-switched telephone
> networks. The two dominate technologies used for VoIP are: (1) the
> Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and (2) Peer-2-Peer (P2P). For
> business and educational institutions SIP VoIP solutions have produced
> substantial savings. For home voice users, however, SIP VoIP is still
> value challenged.
> A typical circuit-switched landline phone costs about $19.95 per month
> (plus tax). The good old American landline phone should be graphically
> depicted beside the word "reliable" in the dictionary. Not only does
> it keep working, even when all electrical power fails, but it can even
> provide you with a light to dial with. At $15 dollars per month SIP
> VoIP is still value challenged due to the lack of full support for
> E9-1-1 emergency services and of course the reliability issues
> inherent with using a real time application over a "best effort"
> network like today's Internet. Although few VoIP articles still
> reference Internet Request For Comments (RFC) 3714 "IAB Concerns
> Regarding Congestion Control," the technical challenges associated
> with VoIP are widely known. Further, even with the recent dubious
> edict by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that VoIP service
> providers will provision support for E9-1-1 within 90 days, this still
> leaves the reliability issues unresolved. The use of adaptive rate
> CODEC's to prevent congestion collapse is a swell idea if it applies
> to my neighbor's service but not my own. Using adaptive rate CODEC's
> to elicit voluntary user preemption has no appeal in the modern world.
> Technology is supposed to be getting better and it is clearly not
> better that users receive disconnects or degraded service quality in
> order to constrain network bandwidth consumption.
> Quality of Service (QoS) has been the four letter word of the Internet
> for a very long time. Yet, we know that real time applications such as
> video and voice are a mismatch for "best effort" service models. Cost
> savings are important, but not if they require users to accept
> backward technology leaps. After 9/11 the United States should have
> begun standardization efforts to insure that VoIP QoS levels would be
> equivalent to circuit-switched networks, especially where emergency
> E9-1-1 calls are concerned. The recent FCC order only requires that
> E9-1-1 call center traffic be properly routed. It does nothing to
> insure QoS of the connection once the call is completed.
> As for SIP VoIP in the home, there is too little incentive for savvy
> consumers to part with more of their hard earned communications
> dollars for an industry offering that simply does not meet the needs
> of the user. Until something concrete can be done to move SIP VoIP
> forward, service based on P2P such as Skype seems to be the only
> sensible choice on the kitchen table. Why should home users pay $15 or
> more per month for less reliable communications than they already have
> with their land line? Skype gives users the ability to experience
> "best effort" voice over the Internet for FREE. Could this be the
> reason why more than 125 million copies of Skype's P2P software has
> been downloaded? And for the occasions where interconnection with the
> existing circuit-switched telephone networks is required, Skype offers
> a very competitive 2 cents per minute interconnection rate. With Skype
> you can talk for 12 =BD hours interconnected to the phone system for
> the same cost as a basic rate SIP VoIP service.
> Until genuine changes are made to support SIP VoIP QoS there does not
> appear to be a convincing or compelling reason today for users to
> choose anything other than P2P VoIP services such as Skype to render
> Internet "best effort" home phone services.
> You can read the complete article and view associated graphics online
> at:
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> Copyright 2005 Peach ePublishing, LLC
> Jason Canon has authored numerous technical research papers including:
> photonic switching, gigabit networking, VoIP E9-1-1 and others. He is
> an expert author for EzineArticles.com. E-mail: Jason Canon at
> snipped-for-privacy@canon.org.
> NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
> daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
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