Seamless Network Telephony

One of the hottest infrastructure topics today is IP

telephony or VoIP. Technically, VoIP is about routing voice over packet switched

data networks instead of the traditional circuit switched voice-only networks.

And the common idea is about routing telephony calls on the cheap, over the

Internet. But there is more to VoIP than just a different type of switching or

cheaper calls.

By treating voice like you treat data, you get all the

advantages that you have with data on to voice. For example, you are not bound

to any single computer to access your email, right? You can access it from any

where in the world, as long as you are connected to the Internet. Similarly,

with VoIP, you are no longer tied down to a specific location. Incoming calls

are automatically routed to your phone, wherever it is on the network.

Krishna Kumar, Editor

VoIP has been around for a long time, but what has held up

its wide spread acceptance is the quality of service and the other usual culprit

- costs. Legal issues, primarily arising out of revenue concerns of telephony

service providers have also helped delay wide spread usage. No wonder then that

enterprise use of VoIP lagged behind personal use that proliferated with

broadband and applications like Skype.

Better equipment, more bandwidth and better bandwidth

management has made quality a non-issue for the enterprise, and choice will

hopefully make cost also not that much of an issue.

IP telephones on an enterprise network are very much like

PCs connected on the same network and can have features similar to PCs.

Facilities like directories and profiles can be centrally made available from

the IT network to the telephones. And as the WAN extends your network across

geographies, your internal telephone network can also be a single one, spanning

across offices.

Considering that IP telephones are actually compute

clients, it is not surprising that many of them are WiFi enabled making network

wide mobility easier. And there are atleast a couple of models in the works that

combine WiFi and GSM capabilities. With these models, mobility would take on a

completely new dimension with seamless mobility across homes and offices.

An interesting aside to this whole discussion is the role

of the IT department vis-à-vis that of the admin or facilities management

setup. Increasingly the two are overlapping and one is not able to see a clear

pattern emerge on whose responsibilities will end where.

Telephony is a subject under facilities management, but

network management is an IT responsibility. So who will manage the IP telephony

system? Increasingly, large enterprises are taking the same decision on both by

outsourcing the running of both facilities and IT services.

Almost five years back, writing in PCQuest about the future

of telephony, I had mentioned that distance would not remain as a key billing

factor for telephony. I had then called it the Death of Distance.

In the consumer space, the death of distance has happened

on a national scale with the advent of the Bharat One plan. In the



Enterprise



space, the death of distance is happening now, enabling users to roam across

offices using the same telephone number. And that is happening because of VoIP.