January 07, 2004

Is this “wow”?

BusinessWeek has a series of articles on VoIP. One of the articles discusses fancy features offered by VoIP. The article quotes an AT&T representative saying “VoIP gives customers a sense of wow”. So I eagerly read further hoping to see some interesting service, only to be disappointed.

  1. Sophisticated call forwarding: This is where an incoming call can be sent to several phones according to a predetermined algorithm. Of course we do not need VoIP to offer this service. It is being offered in PSTN under different names.
  2. Unified messaging: Again VoIP is not critical for this service. It is a function of the backend capability of the answering machine.
  3. Ability to dial from the contact list in the email: Here again, this has nothing to do with VoIP. It is a CTI function and could be done with TAPI capable software and modem.
  4. Correlating customer record and caller: This is another CTI function, not dependent on VoIP per se. I thought AT&T advertised this capability as part of ISDN. So what is new?
  5. Moves, adds and changes (MAC): If this is such a big deal then it is a shame (and shame on PBX vendors) because the technology wasn’t preventing from adding this capability. The cellular systems handle constant movements by dynamically identifying the base station associated with the user. In PBX application, we could replace the base station with the wall jack. Since the movement is less dynamic, a simple (software based) administrative procedure is enough.

So I am still looking for features that really scream for IP. Of course the one I know is a killer application does not get much press – it is that two end-points can decide to communicate with each other without involving any intermediary. It is part of the famous highway analogy. To visit your house, we agree on my visit, sit in my car and drive to your house. I do not get concurrence from anybody else. Since IP allows me to do that, shouldn’t this be the premier feature? I guess, this wouldn’t be “wow” from the service providers’ point of view.

Posted by aswath at January 7, 2004 10:03 AM
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