VoIP
VoIP has constantly been in the news since the ministerial determination in February 2005 when the technology was legally made available to VAN’s. While Telkom had been using VoIP to interconnect African countries with the global network for some time, others had been deploying VoIP, albeit illegally, for some time.
Radio Amateurs used VoIP for a service called Echolink which connects them to VHF repeater stations throughout the world as well as providing conferencing facilities all for free on a zero rated internet connection.
After 2005 the hype soon died down as there were many obstacles like numbering schemes and interconnects to the fixed line and cellular network. One company, now VOX telecom, had to route calls from South Africa to overseas to interconnect, bizarre as it may sound. All that is now something of the past and a new VoIP hype is surfacing.
At the recently held Terrapinn VoIP World conference there was a lot of talk about triple and quadruple play offering many exciting services. But as the triple and quadruple play hype got momentum there seems to have been technology glitches that cooled down the hype.
During a panel discussion it came down to lack of bandwidth to really take advantage of VoIP to offer converged services like voice, data, video and mobility. Other limitations include unavailability of converged CPE/handsets, handover between networks and billing facilities. Another issue is the configuring of the available bandwidth to ensure that non of the services suffer. May be cutting back on data speed to allow quality voice is an option for some but not generally acceptable.
Recently I received a few calls and I asked “are you using VoIP”. The question coming back was “why?” “Well the quality of your audio is lousy and your voice is breaking up.” Cases like this do little to create confidence in VoIP.
A pity because if configured correctly with the right amount of bandwidth, audio can be of a better quality then what we are used to on the fixed line services. In territories where bandwidth is not an issue, wideband technology enables IP telephony users to hear at up to 8 kHz (a landline offers up to 3.4 kHz) which improves the perception of the voice of the other party.
We seem to always come back to lack of bandwidth. While at one stage it was cost that was the obstacle, now it is a shortage of bandwidth. As the costs came down, not enough mind you, the demand increased and the supply dwindled. With all the cables to come, when they do, I am sure the hype about VoIP will increase again. We are in for an exciting time!
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