Reviews:
 ·Junction Networks
3 edits | reply to Onebucket
Re: HD Voip? I now feel compelled to weight in here since wideband voice is a very dear subject to me, and one that I often cover both on VUC calls and my blog.
Firstly, G.722 is simply the most commonly available wideband codec. To be more specific, it appears in a significant number of hard phones, several soft phones and many conferencing systems. That makes it the least common denominator in terms of wideband codecs. It uses exactly the
same amount of bandwidth as G.711.
There are many other wideband codecs, like; AMR-WB, iSac, G.711.1, G.729.1, G.719, G.721.1, G.721.1C, SILK, Speex & CELT. Many of these have specific applications. For example, AMR-WB was designed specifically for wireless networks (cellular.)Some are patent encumbered and so licensed at a cost. Some are patented but royalty free, so there's still a cost of entry to get the documentation and use the codec. Some are open source.
Most of these codecs use less bandwidth than a G.711 encoded call. Some much less. Modern coding transforms can be very bandwidth efficient. But low bit-rate has its own headaches. It makes packet loss a more serious issue. Thus there are serious packet loss concealment (PLC) routines that often accompany very tight codecs. These may or may not be free/patented/open sourced.
Historically, open source codecs like SPEEX and the newer CELT don't see much uptake in hardware devices. There are many reasons for this, most not technological, but legal. No-one wants to invest R&D into a device that cannot be sold because there's a possible patent challenge against an open source project. It's not that they're not fine work by brilliant minds. It's a risk management issue by corp players.
I'd love to see an open source hardware phone! Anyone wanna write code for a Snom 820? Great hardware, just need some really outstanding firmware to go where the corp minds fear to tred.
ATAs are a problem because they connect to traditional phones. Trad phones are a problem becuase they only dial numbers (see SIP URIs to follow) and usually don't sound very good.
It's amazing how much better a G.711 call sounds on a Polycom IP450! It's the same data stream but a physically and electrically better device. Most analog phones are simply cheaply made, and they sounds like it. But people have not been taught to expect better. In fact, cell phones have taught us to put up with lousy call quality. And fly-by-night VoIP providers reinforce that reality.
Yet, VoIP can and should be BETTER than the PSTN.
VoIP has to get beyond providing x minutes for $y/mo. The cost/minute for calling is racing towards zero. There's no margin for anyone in that trend. How many companies have to got under to make that point? To provide service takes money to pay people. If margins are shrinking and absolute revenues declining how does anyone provide service? In the long run they don't.
Wideband voice is better. Period. Don't believe me, then try it yourself. Use a SIP client to call the ZipDX wideband test at wbdemo@conf.zipdx.com or visit the Gigaset wideband sample web site at »www.gigaset-sound.com/
Oh yeah, to actually use wideband voice you pretty much have to forget about phone numbers. Phone numbers are solely an aspect of the PSTN and likely won't get beyond G.711.
Imagine if you could only send email to someone if you knew their IP address! That's the parallel to the PSTN. To go beyond the PSTN we have to leverage peering via SIP URIs, not unlike email addresses.
Remember before email, you had to put a stamp on a letter or pay for a courier or fax. Do you think that the post office or couriers liked the onset of email as the dominant method of communication. I think not.
Phone companies really don't like any kind of IP peering because it will be the final thing that drives the cost of calling to zero. It will make them irrelevant beyond being one of a number of providers of IP connectivity.
All this seem interesting? Join us on a Voip Users Conference call some time. »www.voipusersconference.org
Listen to our call from two weeks ago when Dan Behringer covered the topic pretty soundly.
Or attend the HDComms summit May 21st in NYC. »www.hdcomms.com
Michael
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Michael Graves
Houston TX
»blog.mgraves.org |
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nitzanPremium,VIP
join:2008-02-27
kudos:2 | said by mgraves1:Phone companies really don't like any kind of IP peering because it will be the final thing that drives the cost of calling to zero. See, that's the thing- support, servers, network, etc. all cost money - and a lot of it. It's far from free. |
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Test99Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA
kudos:1 | reply to Onebucket
URI dialing needs just IP phones/soft phones and the Internet. No worries about server reliability or cost. |
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Reviews:
·Junction Networks
1 edit | reply to nitzan
said by nitzan:See, that's the thing- support, servers, network, etc. all cost money - and a lot of it. It's far from free. Agreed. But the current billing model of x cents/minute or $10/mo/y minutes is fundamentally broken. To the point where the cost of tracking usage is now a significant percentage of call cost.
We don't pay per email, nor differing amount for longer/short emails. Or emails to different places.
And finally, call quality should get better over time...not worse.
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Michael Graves
Houston TX
»blog.mgraves.org |
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| said by mgraves1:said by nitzan:See, that's the thing- support, servers, network, etc. all cost money - and a lot of it. It's far from free. Agreed. We don't pay per email, nor differing amount for longer/short emails. Or emails to different places. Actually you do pay per email (or more accurately the amount of bandwidth used to send the email and any related transport charges). It's just hidden in the monthly fee and usually bundled in 5GB or 250GB increments. I send out over 250,000 emails per day on average. And this is for a website that gets about 2 million visitors a week. The bandwidth overages usually amount to about $200-300/month. And that's with wholesale, as low as it gets rates.
Email, VOIP, web traffic, etc. is all just data flowing over an IP connection. As nitzan stated, there is definitely a cost (a minor one that is usually just included as a cost of doing business.) Not to mention that nitzan needs a salary (you do don't you nitzan?)
Unfortunately for VOIP providers they can't subsidize the cost with 7 figure advertising revenues like most websites and ISPs. VOIP providers must pass on the cost of bandwidth or risk going out of business.
The cost of VOIP has a long way to go before it reaches close to zero.
What we need to work on is getting phones with keyboards and wideband support. Then we can get people closer to the email model and less like the cell phone model. |
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nitzanPremium,VIP
join:2008-02-27
kudos:2 | said by dcdeadbeat5:Not to mention that nitzan needs a salary (you do don't you nitzan?) That's mostly what I was referring to. If I have to pay myself and support employees to support a service - it's not free.
A no support if-you-have-a-problem-you're-SOL model might be close to free with SIP calls. But I don't think this is something to be desired from a provider. |
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Reviews:
·Junction Networks
1 edit | reply to dcdeadbeat5
said by dcdeadbeat5:Actually you do pay per email (or more accurately the amount of bandwidth used to send the email and any related transport charges). I don't agree. I don't pay specifically to send/receive email. I pay for bandwidth. And I use it as I desire.
I'm not saying that there isn't some cost involved, but it has little bearing on the cost of any voip traffic I might generate. It's extremely small against the amount of bandwidth used by our casual internet use.
I don't content that service providers don't need to be paid. In fact I think that they should be paid well for high quality service.
Pay for bandwidth. Pay for termination to the PSTN if that's what you need, but that's backward looking. Looking forward, calls between SIP directly end points can have effectively no cost. And they can be MUCH better quality that calls through the PSTN.
Telephony is an anomaly. In no other area of technology have we accepted the kind of stagnation that wee see from the major carriers.
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Michael Graves
Houston TX
»blog.mgraves.org |
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garys_2kPremium
join:2004-05-07
Farmington, MI Reviews:
·Callcentric
·Future Nine Corp..
| said by mgraves1:Telephony is an anomaly. In no other area of technology have we accepted the kind of stagnation that wee see from the major carriers. Not quite stagnant. The PSTN is falling out of favor as more people migrate to wireless carriers for all of their communication needs.
»www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2346769,00.asp
That means people are willing to accept even lousier voice quality to gain convenience and "simplicity" in their lives. The incremental cost of adding a higher minutes plan to the wireless bill is a lot less than maintaining a POTS account, so POTS goes.
I think wireless phones will eventually make all landlines, either via POTS or VOIP, more of a niche market. Those items that need a very high quality telephone connection (modems -- credit card readers, older alarm boxes) will likely be replaced by network-ready or wireless versions that will finally obsolete the PSTN. I suspect that will be within twenty years. |
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Reviews:
·Junction Networks
| The stagnation I was referencing was the very PSTN itself, where the core standards of the product are decades old. Cell service is a fine example of a technology that doesn't stand still, and so it overtakes the legacy service offering.
Cell service is also going wideband. It has in some areas already where 3G service can use AMR-WB when making calls between cell phones on the same carrier.
VoIP is not a landline phenomenon, it's the transport scheme. It's replacing TDM architectures in the carrier world. That's just one of the steps in allowing a transition to wideband.
Whether land-line based or wireless we will see the mass adoption of wideband over time.
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Michael Graves
Houston TX
»blog.mgraves.org |
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cbrain
join:2000-05-21
Silver Spring, MD Reviews:
·Future Nine Corp..
·Google Voice
 ·Verizon FiOS
 ·DSL EXTREME
| reply to Test99
said by Test99:URI dialing needs just IP phones/soft phones and the Internet. No worries about server reliability or cost. While this may be true ... who ya gonna call? How many can accept your calls or know your address?
As long as we demand "free," there is little incentive for anyone to make it easy. |
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Test99Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA
kudos:1 | said by cbrain:As long as we demand "free," there is little incentive for anyone to make it easy. Agreed. No one has found a suitable business model for URI dialing yet. Maybe people would be willing to pay a little more up front for hardware or software that makes URI dialing easy. |
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Test99Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA
kudos:1 | reply to mgraves1
said by mgraves1:I'd love to see an open source hardware phone! Anyone wanna write code for a Snom 820? Anyone know how much memory is available in the Snom 820? |
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Reviews:
·Junction Networks
2 edits | reply to Test99
said by Test99:Agreed. No one has found a suitable business model for URI dialing yet. Maybe people would be willing to pay a little more up front for hardware or software that makes URI dialing easy. And yet there are successful businesses that revolve around SIP and allow dialing by URI. OnSIP and IdeaSIP jump immediately to mind.
The question at the heart of this isn't "who's the carrier or telephony service provider?" or "what is their business model?" Those traditional roles may not need to exist. At present VoIP service providers really only sell transit across a gateway to the PSTN.
What we're considering is evolution beyond the PSTN. Such gateway services will eventually be as irrelevant as buggy whip repair is today.
Implementing calling by SIP URI is simple today. Companies do it all the time to pass calls over their WANs, effecting toll bypass.
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Michael Graves
Houston TX
»blog.mgraves.org |
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Test99Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA
kudos:1
1 edit | said by mgraves1:What we're considering is evolution beyond the PSTN. Such gateway services will eventually as irrelevant as buggy whip repair is today. You are preaching to the converted. 
The question remains: how do we make it easy to use. Most of the routers out there block incoming URI calls by default. And most home networks are moving targets with dynamically assigned IP addresses. You and I know how to fix that. But that still leaves about six billion people who don't. Not everyone aspires to be a system administrator. |
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Reviews:
·Junction Networks
| said by Test99:The question remains: how do we make it easy to use. Most of the routers out there block incoming URI calls by default. You and I know how to fix that. But that still leaves about six billion people who don't. Not everyone aspires to be a system administrator. Fair enough. And in fact there may be too much emphasis on SIP. It's just the protocol du jour in all reality. Protocols and codecs really shouldn't matter any more than what sort of pavement is used to make roads.
I recall back to 2002 when I had Sprint's ION service. It was provided by a box that was connected to DSL and broke out 2 RJ-45s and 4 RJ-11s. That sort of converged CPE, as we now see with Verizon's FiOS, gets around a lot of the technical hurdles.
Or perhaps Verizon's HUB is more the model that will succeed in the residential market. A device plugged into your LAN that "just works."
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Michael Graves
Houston TX
»blog.mgraves.org |
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