Technology marketers love a good thing, and Voice over IP (VoIP), when it emerged in the mid 1990s, was even better than that.
Its almost romantic promise of bypassing telecommunications carriers for voice call--a promise that briefly led an international carrier consortium to lobby for banning the technology because it was seen as such a threat--appealed to the bargain hunter in all of us.
These days, it's those same carriers that are laughing. Having progressed their efforts to build scalable global IP networks, telecommunications providers are gearing up to capitalise on what is widely expected to become a major revenue earner as corporations progressively migrate aging switched voice systems to IP.
The carriers' newfound market strength comes after years of collaboration with Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, NEC, and the other conventional leaders in PABX design and implementation.
Working in close collaboration with carriers, these top-tier equipment providers have successfully defended years of experience against the ambitions of smaller data upstarts who initially believed voice could be treated just like any other data. Cisco Systems, the only exception, has invested heavily and successfully to gain the skills its larger peers have in-house.
The result of all this work is that VoIP has, after a few frenzied years of planning, become a viable strategy for restructuring corporate telecommunications infrastructures.
With careful planning and enough money, it is now entirely possible for companies to reap considerable benefits by consolidating telephony and data networks onto a single IP core. So why aren't more companies taking the plunge?
Corporate decision makers have found many excuses. Some say its hidden expenses mean it's not yet cost effective. Others cite inadequate infrastructure, lack of standards, or concerns over the technical complexity and audio quality of a VoIP solution.
Still others would prefer to ride their aging PABXes into the ground than tinker with the phones that are their company's lifeline. And, over the past year, fiscal conservatism has simply soured decision makers on investing in radical change such as the type that VoIP brings.
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