How often do you see this same drivel appearing in general business articles on VoIP:
Because VOIP services use public networks and software rather than a fixed circuit, the service is far less expensive to build and maintain than traditional phone systems.
Wrong, wrong, wrong and incorrect. It just ain’t so. It’s nothing to do with transmission cost or efficiency. Indeed, the software inside a traditional telephony switch is not much different in complexity than that inside a modern large router. Most of the effort goes into security and management, not packet or circuit routing. And on wireless, IP is hideously inefficient unless your network goes to great pains to strip down all the IP and MAC headers.
Nope, it’s about bypassing the levies and tolls. It’s about people and their control of economic resources. Packetization technology is a side show that happens to drive the change by naturally moving control to the edges. Ignore the efficiency canard. It’s wrong and irrelevant.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:24 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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I would disagree with the statement that the software complexity is not much different between a modern router and a traditional telecom Central Office. (I know that the Nortel DMS-100 has over 6 million LoC, probably a lot more now)
While it is true that the security and management software is the lions share in both, the traditional telephony Central Office contains all of those different protocols and the interworking between different types of terminals. There is also all of that application software that a router does not have. There is all of the N2 -1 interaction software as well.
The bottom line is that the PSTN is a very complex network hidden by a simple device - the telephone and the "stupid" network is a very simple network hidden by very complex devices - Hosts.
PS. I *really* enjoy this BLOG. I find it informative, thoughtful, innovative, interesting, and for the most part right along my way of thinking. Please keep it up.
Posted by: at April 16, 2004 01:17 PMThanks for the comments.
The complexity difference isn't nearly enough to create a noticeable positive price differential in favor of VoIP. If we were talking safety or mission-critical stuff like 747 cockpits or Mars rovers, then yes the cost of software would be an issue. But a few million lines of code already amortized away? No.
Posted by: at April 16, 2004 04:23 PMI don't disagree with the economics, just the statement about complexity.
Where the economice will come into play is in OpEx. Ongoing OpEx has been high for smart networks (love to see a comment on Telcordia and Osmine). It will be more distributed when the apps are distributed to the endpoints and everone has to maintain their own interactions.
Posted by: at April 19, 2004 12:03 PM