What vexes VoIP users?

Alexander O. Yuriev alex-lists-nanog at yuriev.com
Thu Mar 3 23:07:31 UTC 2011


On Thu, Mar 03, 2011 at 04:08:36PM -0500, Scott Helms wrote:

>> No, there's no particulary good technological reason why VOIP-over-cable
>> system shouldn't be able to hand off calls to an arbitrary SIP device.
>>
>> The reason is purely business -  it will destroy their own voice service user base.
>>
>
> PacketCable pre-dates network neutrality discussions in the US, think 1999 
> for version 1.0 
> http://www.cablelabs.com/specifications/PKT-SP-TGCP-C01-071129.pdf
>
> So we have a working technology that pre-dated significant direct to 
> consumer SIP services.  Vonage went direct to consumer in 2002, before that 
> their model was selling to the cable operators.)   Now its true there is no 
> technical reason that 3rd party SIP devices couldn't be included in the 
> mix, especially since PacketCable 2.0 moves from MGCP to SIP.

This has nothing to do with Vonage and likes that market to consumer - their
devices are locked so the consumer is locked into the services that
Vonage/MagicJack/etc provides. They are not the companies that are going to
eat lunch of cable companies and old school telcos as their business model
is to sell the same servie at a minimum discount to the rates of dominant
carriers.

What the cable companies are afraid of is that when a consumers have SIP
speaking devices used to terminate calls the consumers will find VOIP
providers that charge $1.00 a month for a phone number and another $0.01457
per voice minute with 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 or 1 second billing. After deploying
about nearly a thousand SIP-speaking phones for different folk over last few
months I can tell you that the self-provisioning for the customer's side is
becoming so easy a caveman can do it. 

There goes their $20 or more per month worth of profit per phone number.

Does it mean that they are preventing other SIP devices to work on their
IP network? No, it does not. But what they are doing is preventing SIP
devices from working with their voice network because they do not want it to
be a user-controlled SIP device.

Alex

-- 
Alexander O. Yuriev		  	   Providing and Managing Solutions
CTO, Zubr Communications             Hosting, Servers, Applications, Access
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