More on Vonage service disruptions...

Wed Mar 2 18:24:11 UTC 2005

Subject: Re: More on Vonage service disruptions...

> Yeah, I forgot about the regulation thing.  I suppose I'd give the ISP 
> a call first, but I'd expect it to be working within a few hours.  But 
> now that cable modem providers themselves are providing VoIP/dialtone, 
> wouldn't those be regulated by the FCC?

A few quick observations here (my own, personal opinion):
To paraphrase an earlier comment " a 90K stream is not an issue" but what
about 10,000's of them?
In the circuit switched arena, the LEC's compensate each other for either
originating (toll free) or terminating traffic (LD) in a  regulated
environment. Thus there is some business reason to build the network out to
handle the level traffic. 
That is not the case here (with VoIP), as most ISP's are paying for
transport, peering connections, backhaul circuits, internal network
bandwidth, etc. The IP Phone providers may be paying THEIR ISP, but the $$'s
don't nescessarily  flow down to the ISP that the customer is connected to.
That end user's ISP must now pay more for transit, plus beef up their
internal network infrastructure to handle the additional traffic. That would
result in having to raise rates, perhaps making the previously viable, dirt
cheap, VoIP look like not so competitive a choice (vs. traditional dialtone)
to the end user anymore. 
A question to ponder - what would happen to your network , from both a
technical and financial perspective if all of your customers circuit
switched voice traffic suddenly became ip? 