According to Osterman Research, 45% of U.S. business and organizations will be using VoIP by the end of 2007. Jupiter Research reports that 12.1 million U.S. households will be using VoIP.
I’m a little skeptical of these forecasts but even if the actual numbers are only half of the projections there are serious implications.
Implications for Enterprise
If you’re responsible for your organization’s voice services and you haven’t given IP Telephony any thought, the time is now. At the very least, you should understand the drivers behind the technology shift and the potential implications to your business. Media hype aside, sooner or later, IP Telephony will be part of your voice communications and you should at least have a high level plan and timeframe on how you will make the transition. Often, a preliminary investigation will reveal surprising cost and competitive advantages to making the transition much sooner than you may have anticipated.
Implications for Regulators and Service Providers
The tremendous growth of residential VoIP services should instill a sense of urgency with regulators and service providers to address many of the technical issues that have not yet been adequately addressed:
- E911 Services
- Routing the emergency call to the correct location
- Preventing a caller from disconnecting the call
- Ability of emergency personnel to call back
- Quality of Service
- Having the 911 routing issue solved won’t help if the non-QoS enabled network connection is so congested that the voice is unintelligible
- Emergency issues aside, customers will demand consistent voice quality
- Power Protection
- Unlike PBX systems that usually have very limited battery backup protection, residential POTS services will continue to function for days and longer. Today’s residential VoIP services don’t even come close to replicating this level of availability.
Rick McCharles
www.ric.ca
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