So here's the rub, Aswath. The issue isn't whether technically it can be done at the edge (it can, generally, as you know), but the issue is whether customers WANT it that way. When it comes to telephony, our research is showing more and more that customers actually PREFER to go with a "subscription" model. They are so used to it that "owning" their own telephony (i.e. buying the devices) actually makes them uncomfortable. Of course there are those users that prefer to buy once and own it, but suprisingly, when it comes to telephony, this seems to be a very small minority. It seems like people have just been trained for so long now that they are now wired for paying monthly fees for telephony and other possibilities are beyond comprehension.

Given that, it's not suprising that business models also tend to be "service" models, because doing otherwise is like swimming upstream.

David:

You might be right. After all you have attempted to market a device of one kind or another. I am just a backbencher like the two old men in The Muppet Show. :-)

But consider all the softclients. At least one could have tried. Skype gets all the kudos for P2P but not one person identified that they could have done it differently. (As I have argued earlier, it is very much a client/server model). So it is a fair question to ask me to demonstrate such an implementation. I hope I will be able to produce one soon enough.