Re: potpourri (Re: Clearwire May Block VoIP Competitors )
--- Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com> wrote: <snip>
Toll-quality voice requires ...
...all kinds of things that nobody outside the POTS empire actually cares about. folks just want to talk. cell-quality voice is fine. (just ask anybody in panama who has relatives in the USA!)
anecdote: one of my good friends uses Vonage, and my wife complained to me yesterday that she has a very hard time understanding their phone conversations anymore. She correctly identified the change in quality as originating from the VoPI.
sadly, to get "voice over ip" (note, it's not telephony over ip, it's voice over ip),
The difference between the two is readily apparent to businesses: VoIP::POTS as "ToIP"::PBX/Centrex
we're going to have to integrate it into our computers. ("dammit, i need a decent quality USB headset for less than USD $300!") because as long as something looks-like-a-phone, the POTS empire can use the NANP (or local equivilent) and 911 regulations (or local equivilent) to prevent newer more efficient carriers from making money from "voice".
Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but your implication seems to be "damn the 911, full steam ahead." That's great for optional voice (calls to Panama) but not so good for non-optional voice (to the fire dept).
the solution of course is to use computers rather than "phones" and to use domain names rather than "phone numbers".
fine by me - such a service would never be confused with POTS, and no one sensible would treat it as a reliable/robust service.
..., the public Internet has substantial jitter and high coast-to-coast latency, ...
just thinking out loud here, but which "coasts" do we mean when we talk about the "public internet"? my first thought was lisbon-to-sakhalin, rather than seattle-to-miami.
given that the public internet isn't even centered in let alone predominated by north america any more,
How do you measure this? According to Telegeography, London has been the city with the most international connections for about the past 5 or 6 years, but New York (& environs) still had the highest aggregate international bandwidth during that time. I would certainly say that North America is a disproportionate source and sink of traffic relative to population.
and that some of the best (and/or loudest) speakers at nanog (both on the mailing list and in person) are from outside north america, it seems to me that the "reform party" should be thinking of a new name. i'll happily turn ANOG.$CNO and/or WORLDNOG.$CNO over to any elected board who becomes merit's successor-in-interest over "nanog governance"...
Well, North America does have its own issues, and there should be a venue for that. (side note: I'm far more likely to have my employer send me to Seattle than to Tokyo...) <snip>
(if you didn't know about the nanog-futures@ mailing list, go find out, plz.)
Thanks for the plug :)
OTOH, if you're going across a network with decent QoS or within the same general area of the country, you can afford a larger transmit buffer without risking the "walkie talkie" effect.
all it has to be is as good as a cell phone.
Requirements differ. To paraphrase Randy, "I encourage my competitors to use this voice quality standard." David Barak Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise: http://www.listentothefranchise.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
thegameiam@yahoo.com (David Barak) writes:
anecdote: one of my good friends uses Vonage, and my wife complained to me yesterday that she has a very hard time understanding their phone conversations anymore. She correctly identified the change in quality as originating from the VoPI.
as long as she's getting what she's paying for, or getting the cost savings that go along with the drop in quality, and is happy with the savings, then this isn't a bug. unfortunately a lot of companies who use voip or other forms of "statistical overcommit" want to pocket the savings and don't want to disclose the service limitations. that gives the whole field an undeserved bad smell.
Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but your implication seems to be "damn the 911, full steam ahead." That's great for optional voice (calls to Panama) but not so good for non-optional voice (to the fire dept).
i'm not especially tolerant of governments telling me how safe i have to be. if i want a 911-free phone in my house then the most the gov't should be allowed to require is that i put a warning label on my front door and on anthing inside my house that looks like a phone. most american PBX's don't have 911 as a dialplan. you have to dial 9-911. this isn't a violation of the law as long as there's a warning label about it. but go ahead and visit a few large companies and tell me how many such warning labels you see. as an added boon, note that campuses with blocks of 1000 DIDs end up using the corporate headquarters or the address of the PBX as the 911 locator for all 1000 (or 10000 or whatever) extensions, making the fire dept have to select from among 20 different buildings by looking for smoke plumes. geez, where's the FCC when you need 'em, huh? i think the selective enforcement here is sickening, and that if old money telcos can't compete without asset protection, they should file for chapter 11 rather than muscling newcomer costs up by calling these things "phone" and then circling their wagons around the NANP. but that's not going to happen, so i predict that the internet will do what it always does-- work around the problem. so, domain names and personal computers rather than "phone numbers" and things-that-look-like-phones. i've got nothing against 911, and i love my local fire dept.
the solution of course is to use computers rather than "phones" and to use domain names rather than "phone numbers".
fine by me - such a service would never be confused with POTS, and no one sensible would treat it as a reliable/robust service.
and when 20% or 50% of the homes in a region lack this service because the people who live in those homes don't want to pay a POTS tithe, we'll see some interesting legislation come down, and you can quote me on that.
all it has to be is as good as a cell phone.
Requirements differ. To paraphrase Randy, "I encourage my competitors to use this voice quality standard."
back at DEC, the company policy was to build the products we thought the world should be using, and then try to convince the world to use them. DEC was later bought, in disgrace mind you, by a company whose policy was to figure out what the world wanted to use, and build it better and cheaper. if there are people out there who want cell-quality voice, are willing to live without 911, but want to make multiple calls at once with flat rate billing, they should be able to choose VoIP (or VoPI, i guess). however, the FCC seems to have decided that this would be $bad, which i guess from the point of view of old money telcos and capital inertia, it indeed is. -- Paul Vixie
participants (2)
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David Barak -
Paul Vixie