Telepocalypse

Better to have loved and lost

Farewell, PSTN — we loved you so. But via Gizmodo today comes a story on end-to-end encrypted cellphones calls. Just $3500 for a pair of devices, but this will certainly become standard-issue to corporations within a few years. Read their FAQ, it’s fascinating.

They admit to some latency in the voice service (it runs over the GSM data channel), and that it only protects against man-in-the-middle attacks on the content of the voice call. The addressing data (i.e. who calls whom on what devices) is in the open. And you’re still vulnerable to more “traditional” attacks like bugs. The source is freely published for your inspection against backdoors. And there’s a Windows client for those who don’t have a few thousand dollars for a cell phone. All in all, an attractive deal, although the economics have some way to go for mass-market appeal.

Telepocalypse pundit prediction alert: I may come to regret this, but I believe that encrypted telephony being demanded by enterprises will be the bullet in the PSTN’s head. At present, an insider can easily tap into the corporate LAN and see all voice traffic on a converged network. The change will start with board rooms, contract negotiators, business development, legal, financial and HR departments. Then a general uptake of encrypted telephony internally. Finally, the islands will become joined up. And the PSTN will be a bedtime story for your kids, and how things were in the old days.