Gordon Cook wrote:
When voice no longer rides on the TDM transport that was especially designed to carry it and is just a packet-encapsulated application on an IP network, the new central office is no longer a building housing five million dollars worth of equipment. It fits on a desktop using SIP, SIP proxy servers, and ENUM databases. It costs well under five thousand dollars and delivers an entire range of services not possible to derive from now obsolete TDM hardware costing a thousand times more.
There are many things that are acceptable to society as a whole. However, when it comes to one's life, they suddenly become more cautious. Do you propose that technology today is at a state that we can replace the old system and still maintain E911? Would you trust your life to it? Remember, there are very tight regulations and accountability concerning the legacy network and what it is allowed in the way of outages. This is because people's lives depend on it. Reguardless of loss of electrictiy, gas, and water, you can plug a $5 phone into a POTS line and call for help. I have yet to see someone swear by their own life that the new technologies will meet the uptimes of the legacy. The fact is, in the telco world, they don't. Even businesses that require time sensitive, guaranteed communications don't trust the new technology whole heartedly. Having said that, outside of the scope of the local CO, I can see your point. -Jack