atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX VoIP & Cloud Phones, Hosted PBX, General IP Phones VoIP is Dead

https://gigaom.com/2008/11/02/who-killed-the-voip-revolution/

-Hal

Pulver Marketing rand the last AstriCon. They took a conference that was about engineers and developers and people who made a living on a product (asterisk in this case) and turned it into nothing more then a marketing affair.

Why would Cisco and Siemens need to be at a conference for Asterisk?

They killed themselves. Just more proof that buzz words wont create a viable industry. The last of the dot-boom leftovers.

Would someone forward this to LaneComm on that other bb?

Consider it done.....and with extreme pleasure...

VoiP is not dead, mark my words. It's a viable technology and advances will continue to be made. This article is just a way to pump up Skype and its product and it allows another telecom "expert" to present a compelling argument against something he doesn't favor. "We're smarter than everyone else". Anyone can second guess someone after the risk has been taken and a plan doesn't work. So the VoiP companies tried to take on the big boys and got shot down. Someone will learn from their mistakes. The big boys are using VoiP, they just don't advertise it.
All you guys celebrating the death of VoiP should stop acting like scared, grumpy old men and understand that change is not a bad thing. VoiP works great, when done right. If you don't want to deal with it, then don't. But why continue wasting all this energy bad mouthing something because YOU don't like it?

I agree Kevin. The demise of VOIP is premature and exagerated. Promoting SKYPE is fine. However VOIP is going to continue to mature and grow.

As you state "when done right" it's an interesting and viable vehicle. Our company will continue to learn more & more about VOIP--but 90% of our business is still involved with copper wire/tip & ring/digital systems/analog devices etc. Our resident IT guy is still carrying a tool belt with all of the necessary items for "old" telephone work--but when needed, he's got his laptop to look at our VOIP installs too. He's not going to toss either one out the window. Not while I'm still around, anyway.

I agree that the posting is suspiciously lax in its praise of Skype. Not that it is not an interesting and useful product (I use it often), but in order to bring it to the level an average business telecom end-user is accustomed to, means lots of $$$ and time. The competitive advantage disappears, imo.
I think the same goes with VOIP. You have to be able to offer it in the mix, but it should be also understood that there's no free lunch - for any typical customer there's inherent drawbacks that may outweigh the advantages. The posting was on the money concerning the engineering fumbles and the overblown marketing promises.
The last attempt for an open standard (useless words...) telecom infrastructure was ISDN-to-the-desktop. Anybody remember that boondoggle? The detractors were right, ISDN in that context really stood for "It Still Does Nothing". Notice I said in that context, because ISDN certainly didn't die, it just mutated into something useful.

From an ILEC guy I left reading this article with a little different perspective than some of you may have… One of the things I took away from it, is VoIP’s attack on an ILEC’s “accesses lines” (dial-tone/POTS) is not proving to be as worthwhile then was hyped. So many end-user/customers are stepping away from “home phones” the demand isn’t there to cost effectively “reinvent the PSTN wheel.”

And a thought on the authors writing “style” or lack of …. Dude needs to put down the thesaurus, me thinks…. Begat? Really? He used “begat?” Outside of a theological discussion does ANYONE still use that word? LOL!!! :rolleyes:

To KLD and Moore Tel-

No worries here guy.

Our VoIP sales in 08 better than 862k and still 350K in the pipeline with requests every week for quotes.

Our TDM sales were only 1/2 of that.

We will see in a few years who was right.

VoIP works and VoIP pays, you guys just need some training in VoIP and staying ahead of the curve in business. As I said its your business to succeed or fail.

So get over it and stop starting controversy in the forum.

Go sell something.....

KLD and Mooretel Part 2

Did you guys actually read the article?

Is is specific to ILECs and PSTN replacement.

IP in the enterprise and SMB market space is killing TDM.

Get positive for the good of all of us!!!

Our VoIP sales in 08 better than 862k and still 350K in the pipeline with requests every week for quotes. Our TDM sales were only 1/2 of that.

A lot of the difference in sales can be attributed to what you and your sales people push now doesn't it?

-Hal

Hal, traditional phone vendor's learning how to sell, install & then service VOIP systems is a very steep learning curve.

we all know that VOIP has lots of exciting promises, but if not installed correctly can become a total disaster.

But let’s not pretend that TDM service in the U.S. is a dreamland of quality & service.

Let’s not pretend that having your call routed over a Verizon POTS line installed on 60yr old cable with hiss & noise on the line is anything but that.

Every system I have ever put in with a PRI works, but they have all had on going problems with alarms & other issues.

Hal

Sorry but no...not here!.

When I said requests for quotes 8 out of 10 ask specifically for VoIP or applications that only IP provides.

We don't push technologies on clients we educate them and find out what they really need today and five years or so down the road. Its called providing solutions to the needs and forcasted needs of a business.

They spend there money any way they want to.

Isn't that what all good interconnects do?

I know we have had this debate so many times...
as someone young and new in the industry, I am willing to learn whatever technology is out there that can further my business and skills. Just today I spoke to an electrician who was working at the school. He suggested that I take some CAD classes and combine the computer and electronics skills. I realize that VOIP is not for everyone or every situation...knowing how a particular technology works is really the way to know how to apply it in each case.

I don't believe in pure IP just yet, like Asterisk. Maybe down the road, who knows. But if you talk VOIP in a cost reduction solution for multi-sites businesses, then it is absolutely a must.

We have a customer (they advertise on the boards at the Bell Center) that are linked from TO, Miami, Algeria, Montréal, Gatineau, Sherbrooke, Longueuil, Varennes. Guess how? Yep, VoIP.

While I agree that for the residential customer, cell phones ("phone" is a vast understatement today) are replacing land lines, killing VoIP in its egg.

What will save PSTN is optical fibre, and the 2-3 bills days will be a thing of the past even for those who resist. Fibre is here in my city and will be in my suburb in a year. I will still have a "physical connection"; I can't see the day when my world will resolve around a cell, but that's just me.

But copper won't come back in fashion and will be stuck in neutral for years before going the way of the telegraph. 10, 20, 30 years? Who knows; if you read experts from start of the decade, we should be there already. :rofl:

Most of our sales are hybrid solutions, pure IP doesn't have a market right now where I'm from.

Dead? No. Fire sale/rebuild? definitely.

Is everyone forgetting that 3Com has VoIP system for years? Works great, now they have the big boy VCX system, very nice system and we installed on over two years ago to a bank that has 30 locations and they really love it. Also, Fonality and Trixbox, these systems can even as small business can afford and have the latest and greatest technology out there. I been in the telecommunication business for 12 year and seen many changes. Yes, this is a learning curve but this is what this business is all about. Always changing, so for the better and some for the worst is what YOU make out to be.

This article is little more then a advertisment for Skype, a propietary over hyped "network" that eBay grosely overpaid for.

The only thing that I can agree with about this arcle is that VOIP has created price comeptition. However, this is temporary. Eventually your investor wants to make money.

The market is correcting its self. Companies who should of never been in the business are closing up shop and/ or scaling back. This includes Cisco. It is redicolus the amount of hoops I have to go though to perofm a MAC on CallManager compared to Avaya.

The main problem with VOIP, other then the fact that it has attracted unqualified people to this industry (Asterisk anyone?) is that it is assumed VOIP is a all or nothing propisition. I use it in large call centers all the time and it works just fine with my TDM Avaya Callmasters. I also use it for home agents and to send calls to remote call centers.

The writer of this article (who I suspect is really Skype) is clearly unqualified to make such bold claims that "VOIP is dead".

- Nortel, Siemens and Ericsson "top VOIP verdors"? Hardly. Nortel is near bankruptcy, Siemens was late to the party and is now apart of Gore and Ericsson exited the business selling out to Aastra. Who has actually seen a Ericsson VOIP phone system in the USA where this article was written? Who has actually seen a Ericsson VOIP phone system anywhere in the world??

- Yes, SIP is a open protocol. Large phone systems such as Avaya, Siemens, Cisco use SIP with propietary extensions that make the phones act like a digital phone. This is a problem with SIP and not VOIP. The same argument can be made about VXML. The writer of this article is not declaring that IVRs and Speech servers are dead. Also, most large business dont care about this claim. They would rather buy all their phone equipment from one vendor if not for compatibility but for convience. I buy analog phones from Avaya. If you want 100% open VOIP, get a Asterisk box, just dont expect the same functionality and reliabilty as a "propietary" VOIP phone system. My Avaya S8700s use SIP with 3rd party equipment just fine. My "propietary" VOIP phones have one step installation, plug them in. Can asterisk do this?

- Cell phones are not a replacment for a phone system. Even if their pricing becomes equivlent to useing a phone system, who wants to use a cell phone for 8 hours a day, on confrence calls, using advanced features, etc. What network do cell phones use in the back end? VOIP and TDM.

Its contradictory that the writer suggests that we sould all convert to Skype creating a global telecom monopoly of a size that we have never seen before yet complains about the limitations of the SIP protocols openness. How open is Skype (both its protocol and its network)? So because SIP is not perfect we sould all convert to Skype?

VOIP is just getting started, and the future is not a propietary system like Skype.

I agree that VoIP is far from dead.
Im constantly upgrading and enabling IP functionality on systems, planning the use of it in disaster recovery, and implementing it over TDM when it makes sense.

How about the Einstein that completely remodeled a building across the street from his main building but didnt install any copper between the buildings. He didnt forget the fiber cable so as you can see he had to buy POE.

It might be down but not out.

Me......We have installed several and support over 45 systems that have a combination of VoIP and traditional PBX lines - extensions...all together more than 100,000 extensions. :thumb:

I am looking to hire another Ericsson tech and a Siemens HiPath tech if anyone knows one?

Ericsson MD110 and MX-One Systems are for large campus and enterprise enviroments - same for Siemens and Nortel totally different market space.

Wow, that averages to over 2,000 stations per system. Not bad!

Wow!! Lane, you obviously travel in circles that I don't even have a chance of working in. My largest customer has maybe 150 stations.

We went up to scope a prospect that had maybe 600 stations and was linked to corporate and to 2 or 3 other locations---but his network was such a mishmash of switches--we decided to back out. I couldn't even envision working on the scale that you have. Very impressive!!

Mostly Maritime clients and large schools.

It keeps 3 guys plus me busy yearround but allot of international travel.

Given the US economy and market it keeps all of our creditors happy though.

It is a very different world - we just did a software and hardware upgrade on a ship with 2300 extensions a couple of weeks ago with less than 30 minutes of downtime; of course about 40 hours of prep time in our lab and nearly 60 years of experience between us to achieve that goal.


.

I have worked strictly with VOIP systems for the past three years and don't see it coming to an end. I think its a train and the traditional PBX techs or companies are going to have to jump on,
no matter what the pros and cons are.
Because companies are asking for it and moving to it and there is no way in hell anyone person, company or technology is going to stop it, right or wrong.
So why would you fight it when you can profit from it, its sink or swim.

There is always a viable solution with VOIP if it is called for. I for one love the whole VOIP technology and the company I work for is pushing to change Nortel systems to IPT platforms all across the U.S, Canada and Europe... Lucky me...

We are Also looking to remove the desktop phones and replace them with the Office Communicator. Pretty sweet I think..

It hasn't been easy, but I've been positioning myself to maintain the mid to large size hybrid systems (CS2100 and CS1000), versus the more traditional TDM PBXs and end offices. I'm also impressed by the developments made with desktop messaging, remote notification, and video conferencing.

I got a stack of trouble calls today via the fax machine - all for the VOIP phones on site. Then I noticed that I couldn't access anything on my PC.

Turns out there was a power problem. Both UPS's shorted out and knocked out both main & backup power to the data center. Lost every server in the building (25 floors, 3,500 hosts & printers).

We've got about 15-20 VOIP phones in the building - two departments that need ACD (the old 5ESS doesn't offer anything fancy enough).

Well, when the servers went down, so did the ACDs and the VOIP phones. The beat up old Centrex sets kept on plugging.

We used to install a line of industrial PCs with dual power supplies that took a -48VDC feed (that we supplied from the telephone power plant). That probably would have saved their butts here. Any body ever use those bad boys? Are they still around?

Just another problem with VOIP as far as I can see.

Sam

Sam,

There are issues and the VOIP system is only as good as the design and implementation. It sounds to me the design of the backup power was not thought out well. I started my telecom experience on 1A2 and Centrex but I also have embraced the evolution on the industry. Don't worry we will bring you and rest of the guys along with us kicking and screaming! haha!

I have to give Sam some credit though, power is a customer issue in IP telephony, whereas before it was a carrier issue. In defense of VOIP though, all digital telephony has customer-side power requirements.

Sam, in industrial settings, pure-DC powered computers are old news, and still widely used, especially in embedded devices, DC power is also used in data centers, due to its inherent stability and overall reliability relative to AC. In localized installations, transmission is not an issue and AC loses its advantage.

<rant>
Again, please be careful that you're not -- in making arguments that X sucks -- conflating Voice Over Internet *Protocol* (which as several BCM fans noted, can work very well) with Voice Over The Internet (which is a completely different, and potentially much dodgier issue).

You can *do* VoN, and reasonably well, but you do have to understand the territory, and you can't guarantee the carriers in the middle won't screw you. But you probably can't do it to higher than 2 or 3 9's over a year.
</rant>

@ Silversam

I think power problems will affect anything with a power cord not just VoIP systems... :shrug:

I agree. What I was asking was, that, back in the day, when I installed mission critical PCs in a telecom environment I tried to use bulletproof equipment whenever possible. PCs powered off the Telecom battery plant were my preferred choice. Now the question:

Are people still using these DC powered PCs anywhere? (I know they're not by me, but I work at a NYC agency). Or are they throwing in a Dell and calling it a job well done?

Sam

Sam,

Sun Netra servers can run on DC power. They are stout boxes purpose built for telecom applications, but they cost about 2X than a similar spec'd Dell. They start out a little over $4000 for a x86 compatible box.

HP also offers a DL385 Opteron Server with redundant 48VDC power, which they also market as a telecom product. Search for "Carrier Grade" or "NEBS certified" to find servers purpose built for telecom.

You can actually get ATX-design power supplies that will run off -48, probably in both standard and redundant versions -- though who has *2* -48 supplies?

And there's a whole 'nother stratum beneath "NEBS certified" called "NEBS compliant", which translates roughly as "we designed it to those specs, but we didn't want to pay Telcordia for the sticker".

They're usually somewhere between a bit and a fiar amount cheaper.

Gentlemen, we are drifting off the topic. Please continue with the correct topic.

My bad Ken, sorry.


Sam

Sorry Ken, thanks for the moderation. Sam gives out a lot of good info around here so I jumped at the chance to answer a question for him.

Let me steer back to the topic at hand.

The example Sam mentions above is not certainly limited to VOIP but seems to be an all to common problem with VOIP implementations. Someone replaced equipment that was purpose built to run 24/7 in a high temperature, low maintenance environment with equipment that is not. If someone is planning on using PC hardware to run their PBX then that hardware needs to be run in the environment that the PC manufacturer envisioned. In Sam's example it was a power failure, most that I have seen have been problems from overheating.

When someone is pricing out a VOIP setup, especially anything PC based, they have to price out the right equipment for the job and factor the cost of backup power and cooling (and backup power for the cooling). They also can't dump the additional responsibly of maintaining the VOIP system onto the IT department and expect them to run it perfectly because "its based on computers".

VOIP isn't dead, but its not the magic money factory that some business articles make it out to be either.

Article about ebay mishandeling of skype
https://www.smithonvoip.com/ebays-mishandling-of-skype-continues/

we have a customer that travels to costa rica often, whenever her soft ipt gets jittery and unusable she goest to her skype which always works flawless...

voiplessons

good overview of installing and running voip.

royb, thanks for the link....very interesting.

royb,
The link didn't work for me...

Kevin, the "nojitter" web site is down right now according to the site.

I dont know that VoiP/pure IP based will ever become the standard. TDM to my mind is still way more flexible and end user friendly. Pure IP based systems ( we sell IPitomy) have their place and in certain applications are great. An interesting fact is that Open Source products accounted for 20% of the sales of smaller phone systems last year, Asteriks based stuff. Thats a big number. For us, it paid to get into it and learn the technology now. Just another arrow in the quiver so to speak.

Phoneguy... you're right Open Source based IP products are at over 18% of market share! What other "manufacturer" has over 3000 people in their R&D department?! :thumb:

Thanks too for the "plug"... Anyone interested can contact me direct.

What we like to say in the open source realm is that we have more engineers then salesmen. We also like to say it's free as in speech and beer. Most people don't get it but those who do get a good chuckle out of it.

The biggest problem with open-source is lack of a mother-ship to contact for tech support. With Nortel/Avaya/Ipitomy/Etc you can always phone home when things don't work. With open source you get to go MacGyver on it. But that's also the good and bad part about it.