Its like VoIP minus the headaches. Covad Communications has started pushing a new VoIP solution that doesn’t need any special gear in your house. I had written about this but can’t seem to find the link. Maybe I need one of them Google boxes. A simple phone, jacks into the plain old phone hack, and Covad does all the mumbo-jumbo in their central office. It is a local and long-distance UNE-P replacement service. This is like regular phone service, except its packetized voice. This could be the turbocharger VoIP needs. I am assuming, Covad will wholesale it to its resellers, which means Speakeasy might have this. Maybe time to port my phone # over to them finally. Also this is a big one for Nokia and Zhone, who are trying to upstage Alcatel I guess. Meanwhile, Mike gets my best headline of the day vote for : I can’ believe its not POTS VoIP.
Om, you need to justify how this is VoIP. Alternatively, if VZ packetizes my call after the Class 5 switch, is it VoIP? By the way, I said spuriously as much in my comment to FCC in Dec. 2003. At least now, us in the industry better crisply define VoIP. Otherwise all telephony will be VoIP just to get regulatory relief. (Remember your comment in podcasting about all calls being packetized somewhere.)
Good point. i need to make that distinction. now unlike typical VoIp which does the analog to digital (IP) conversion at the ATA level and sends out voice traffc as packets over broadband, in this case that conversion happens in the central office at the DSLAM level and transport happens right on the backbone. Now that is VoIP to me as well. Just like i have said in the past, that since most of the international traffic is packetized, voip has been with us for long. it is not voip as in retail running over broadband connection voip, the sort vonage sells. sorry about that. i should have been more explicit. (Oops you actually listened to the podcast… )
Aswath is right there. What does Covad brings that my ILEC cannot bring ? What Value added services will be available ?