RE: ABC news on Internet Telephony

[talon57@well.com]

David Sternlight writes:

>There's something fundamental going on here beneath the surface.
>Surprisingly, a recent item (maybe the one you reported) on this
>suggests that the big phone companies are trying to use this
>phenomenon rather than stop it. I think it was AT&T who announced
>that they had web software that improved the quality of such
>internet voice calls. Surprisingly constructive, in contrast to
>the coalition of small phone companies screaming for the FCC to
>"stop it". The FCC has wisely said they're not going to act right
>now because it could kill an incipient new technology.

There is something fundamental going on here, a lack of common
sense, and/or critical reasoning.

Lets try it again. Who is the most likely to be disintermediated by
a global packet network? (how do you get to your ISP?)

I assume by "big phone company" vs "little phone company" you are
refering to long distance vs local service, tell me, if the RBOC's
continue merging, at what level do they become a " big phone
company."

 The RBOC's are not the only local service providers of course,
here in Illinois alone there are more than 80 (at my last count)
providers of local service, and soon there will be many more.

The other "urban myth" you are helping to support is the notion
that it is the local providers that are fighting deregulation.
Ameritech filed for total unbundling in March of '93, and you don't
see them insisting on having a percentage of the long distance
market before the long distance companies are allowed to compete in
the local loop.

>This is the rankest speculation on my part, but could some of the
>bigger, smarter phone company cum internet providers have done
>some serious analysis and concluded that we're moving away from
>distance-based rates for voice calls. Might they even have
>examined where we'll be in the next ten years (with ADSL, etc.)
>and decided that the network technology and simple market
>economics makes fixed charges per "line" more profitable to them
>than metered usage? Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, but
>some of the bigger actors are starting to behave in a surprisingly
>counter-intuitive (based on the way we stereotype them) fashion on
>this topic.


point to point circuits are more efficiently handled by circuit
switching rather than packet switching networks. Nicholas
Negroponte wrote an interesting piece about asynchronous vs
synchronous, I believe it is in his book "Being Digital." 

ADSL is an interesting attempt at digital telephony but expensive
and basically would mean replacing existing central office
switches. (backbone bandwidth) 

In a packet network you have to either dedicate a portion of the
bandwidth for a synchronous circuit, or you have to have a very
fast network and use very small packets (ATM), expensive either
way.

A single central office has many times the bandwidth of the widest
part of the internet, and the average state has hundreds of CO's.
If even a small portion of the Internets current users tried
placing a call things would grind to a halt. A huge increase in the
number of backbones and their bandwidth would solve this, but who
will pay the bill? 

TANSTAAFL

Sometime ago the discussion was on the cost of laying new fiber,
may I suggest  the realworld heuristic of "a million dollars a
mile."

Please note I am not trying to make fun of anyone personnally, I am
in the words of Jubal Harshaw "heaping scorn upon an inexcuseably
silly idea, a practice I shall always follow."

Brian
communicate globally, censor locally