Sign up for our Newsletters |   Email the Editor    Email a Friend    Print this Page 

We're on the verge of an exciting new era in Internet telephony, moving far beyond the bypass of tariff structures for long-distance services toward widespread mass market appeal.

With dramatic improvements in voice quality, reliability, speed to market and service richness, Internet telephony promises an almost universal range of applications. In fact, as large-scale voice and data convergence begins, Internet telephony will soon deliver the best of both the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and the Internet. This is critical to the future of established service providers, new carriers and business customers.

To manage converging networks and deliver on the promise of Internet telephony, new hardware is a key requirement. This includes high-performance general computing platforms, high-capacity optical network devices, quality-of-service-enabled gateways and routers and high-bandwidth access devices. "Call controller" enabling software is also needed to provide the intelligence for completing any type of "call," whether voice, data or video.

Another area to look at is quality of service software is required to maintain reliable, PSTN-equivalent services; directory services software is needed to allow the call controller to know which services are available to which users; and, a centralized security system is necessary to ensure that only authorized users can connect to the network. Finally, this Internet telephony network must also interconnect with other carriers via the SS7 network and meet the regulatory requirements therein.

As for users, the main requirement is transparency — providing a look and feel exactly like the PSTN. This means people must be allowed to use their existing phone equipment and enjoy existing PSTN services. They must be able to reach callers who are on traditional telephony networks and receive the voice quality and service reliability they're accustomed to getting from the PSTN.

To ensure success, seven tenets of Internet telephony for converging networks have emerged: 1. Internet telephony is about services. Basic voice communication is a commodity. To regain acceptable margins, exciting and compelling value-added services must be offered. Increasingly, IP-based services will surpass the PSTN's in sophistication, innovation, and market appeal.

2. No one owns the Internet telephony network. The emerging Internet telephony network will mature in a high-velocity environment that will not tolerate proprietary systems. The central office is giving way to the distributed office.

3. The Internet telephony market demands equivalence. To the Internet telephony subscriber, packet and circuit are irrelevant terms. All that matters is that the look and feel of the PSTN is maintained.

4. Nothing about Internet telephony is trivial. Data networks are different from voice networks. Converging these networks into a single packet network is extremely challenging. Voice is delay-sensitive, most data is not. True Internet telephony networks will need to draw the best attributes from both types of networks.

5. The new back office is critical. As data and voice converge, back office tools that meet telecommunications standards and practices are an absolute necessity for large-scale voice networks.

6. IP quality of service is a prerequisite. Today's quality of service technology can guarantee voice quality. Historically, it has been difficult to carry real-time, delay-sensitive voice traffic on data networks that are by nature delay-insensitive.

7. Those who take chances will win. First-movers gain a huge, often insurmountable advantage. Market followers will not be rewarded as they were in the PSTN, which developed slowly and conservatively.

Gregg Astoorian is the director of Internet telephony marketing for Nortel Networks Corp. in Toronto.

Go to the top.
<< Back

Share