Are there still barriers to VoIP acceptance?

Within Aculab, we're often discussing the general acceptance of VoIP and whether we're any closer to the time when traditional TDM voice will disappear. One thing that is clear is that whilst we are in the midst of a large shift towards IP voice, the general use and acceptance of VoIP is still at a slower pace than we were predicting 1, 2, 5 and certainly 10 years ago. One analogy recently drawn in our discussions was with the continental drift. Plate tectonics theory states that whilst the actual speed is very slow, somewhere between the growth of a fingernail and the growth of human hair, it is relentless and unstoppable leading to the creation of new geographic features along its path, such as mountains and volcanoes - again an analogy we quite liked. Being right on the edge of the VoIP (or plate tectonics!) shift we're all very aware of this movement but to the majority of people it remains an unseen level of detail that does not concern them.

But why the reluctance? Quality doesn't get touted as the restricting factor any more. Sure there can be issues and certainly calls across the public Internet won't reliably give the same quality as a dedicated PSTN line, but generally people are very happy with the compromise of that quality when taking into account the cost savings in the call. Availability doesn't seem the reason either, most modern voice solutions use IP at its core, of both equipment and networks.

In today's economic climate, the traditional method of moving to new technologies by 'rip and replace' seems to have outlived its day. For both financial and acceptability reasons, moving to new technology now means a slow, measured approach together with a well thought through solution to integrate existing legacy equipment - without losing any existing legacy functionality. Horror stories abound of where systems have been put in but then taken out due to, for example, the CEO losing a particular feature which he, and perhaps only he, used across their corporate PBXs. Similarly the unavailability or poor quality of a VoIP connection when calling back into the office has forced companies to rethink their telecoms strategies.

Tim Joint was recently interviewed by Erik Linask of TMC where these issues were covered in more depth and some solutions proposed to help integrate legacy PBXs into modern VoIP environments without having to lose functionality, quality or control. The term we've coined for this is 'Extensibility' - the ability to allow solutions to be upgraded or enhanced without being forced to make major changes to the existing infrastructure. Listen to the podcast here and understand more about the issues and exactly how our ApplianX IP Gateway offers extensibility by allowing the easy addition of IP solutions or networks to legacy PBX installations.

FaceTime video chat on an iPhone 4 would be great...if I knew anyone else who had one also!!

Today is the day - queues at Apple stores around the world of people waiting to get their hands on Apple's latest piece of tech. It sounds like a fantastic piece of kit, and I would love to have one (if I hadn't just splashed out on a Nikon DSLR camera then I might have been tempted). The feature I have been most interested in is the video chat application that Apple has come up with, FaceTime.

As I wrote in my previous post, this could kick start the video communications market, a feat that others have tried previously but with limited success. You may also know that one of the other topics I am following closely, and for which Aculab has a great product, is HD voice. Both technologies have much potential, but share a common problem - if you don't have the same technology at each end of the call and the ability for the call to traverse the network in the middle un-hindered, then you do not get the benefit. You will end up with 'capability islands'. Your new iPhone 4 can communicate as a phone with any other phone worldwide, but you can only video chat with another iPhone 4 owner. Similarly, if you have an HD voice enabled phone (such as those customers of Orange in the UK involved in the HD voice trials) then you can call another HD voice phone on the same network and get a high quality call.

Whilst Aculab does not itself sell phones for HD voice or video, what we can do is provide the core network technology that can join these islands so that the benefit of the improved communication technology can be spread. So perhaps whilst queuing for your iPhone 4 you should make friends with the person next to you so you have someone to video chat with.