Internet Telephony has remained a hot - and fast-moving - target in the few years since its inception, but for 1998, expect one thing to be certain: More voice calls will be routed over IP networks, be it the Internet or otherwise. And you may not even notice a difference.
"The future telcos will be IP-based," said Jeff Pulver, IT guru and publisher of the Pulver Report on IP-based telephony. "It's not an argument, it's a done deal."
One of the promising Internet telephony developments to be deployed this past year has been phone-to-phone voice communications using packet-switched, IP technology. Calls can be placed to and from any telephone, same as ever; the difference is in the routing that lies between them. For the past hundred-plus years of telephone service, routing has been done over the public switched telephone network. With IT, the call is instead routed over an IP network.
The IP network doesn't have to be the Internet, either - the technology is just as good, and useful, over private IP networks. "Calling this Internet telephony is a misnomer," Pulver said. "It's a good name as a reference, but it's really voice over IP networks - it's really IP telephony."
And sloppy network administrators need not apply. "If the network is not well-managed," said Pulver, "there's no guarantee for quality of service. If you're not getting the same quality of service, you might as well use your telephone."
Both Pulver and Kathy Meier, general manager of Internet communications at Lucent Technologies, call 1997 the year of the trial. "Businesses and service providers have been sort of kicking the tires of this technology," said Meier. Lucent's own Internet Telephony Server has been available since fall.
"What I think we're going to see in 1998 is the year of focused deployment, in which businesses and service providers decide to employ [IT] in selective areas," Meier said. "At the same time, I think you'll begin to see trials in the network for consumers."
Meier outlined the three segments of this market: business customers who sit it next to their PBX and deploy it in selected sites for voice and fax; service and network providers which use it to create a new category of service for their customers; and ISPs, some of whom are "next-generation telcos" which provide voice-on-packet-network - at a substantial savings.
"The first generation of Internet telephony was client PC software, so that people could communicate over the Internet - PC-to-PC chatting, is what I call it," Meier said. "It was technically complicated and not universal - one of my colleagues refers to it as sort of the ham radio period."
Where it is right now, she said, is the beginning of the second generation - which is IT servers and gateways, where calls are typically made from phone-to-phone.
And as far as traditional telcos getting involved, it's not a question of if, but when. This is the sentiment of Amy Wright, director of corporate communications at Clarent, which sells enterprise IT solutions to long-distance telcos. Wright said the company recently conducted a survey which found that the personal computer is not ready to act as a replacement for the telephone, because not all computers in the enterprise are multimedia-enabled, and a PC doesn't match a phone's form factor. For voice communications, phone-to-phone is where it's at.
"The advantage of this generation is that it's more universal, it's more ubiquitous for users, and it's easier for users - you basically use the same dialing patterns you would today," said Lucent's Meier. "Your IT server takes the voice from a PBX or key system, compresses it, packetizes it, and sends it over a packet network, whether it is an intranet or the Internet."
An example of using the former is Qwest Communications, which recently announced a 7.5 cents-per-minute long-distance service from which calls will be routed over Qwest's own fiber optic network. Company spokeswoman Lisa Hempel said the service is in testing and will be available in 25 US cities in February, with more target cities - and features - to come. "You'll see things like fax over IP, VPN [virtual private networks] - you'll start to see it move more into the business space," she said.
"When you think about what's going on, it really is a revolution in packet networks and their ability to carry voice," said Meier. "When you look at the hype that's around IT, it's more about voice being able to be transported on these new networks."
And she does not see the old public switched telephone network becoming obsolete - rather, the coming years will show their migration toward voice over IP networks.
Pulver agrees. "The PSTN is dead, long live the PSTN," he said. "The PSTN will be the IP network of the future."
What this shows is a Negropontian redefinition of what it means to be a telephone network: "Up until now, we've been talking about putting data over voice networks," said Pulver. "Soon, we'll be putting voice over data networks. The PSTN isn't the architecture, but it's the mindset."
