the deep roots and origins of VoIP

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Daniel Berninger <dan () danielberninger com>
Date: September 20, 2004 8:10:41 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: the deep roots and origins of VoIP

Dave,

For IP - Om Malik's VoIPDaily (see voipdaily.com) posted a relatively 
long
essay I wrote about the origins of VoIP.

The piece seeks to move the VoIP debate beyond the surface gee whiz 
toward
an understanding of events as fundamental long brewing inexorable 
tectonic
shifts in the communication landscape.

It serves as the companion to an essay addressing the future - "End of
Telecom" at http://www.danielberninger.com/endoftelecom.html

Best regards,

Dan

202.250.3838

> > > > > > > > >


The VoIP Insurrection
What just happened?

The $3 billion dollar budget at Bell Laboratories did not include a 
single
project addressing the use of data networks to transport voice when 
VocalTec
Communications released InternetPhone in February 1995. As of 2004, 
every
project at the post-divestiture AT&T Labs and Lucent Technologies Bell 
Labs
reflects the reality of voice over Internet Protocol. Every major 
incumbent
carrier, and the largest cable television providers, in the United 
States
has announced a VoIP program. And even as some upstart carriers have 
used
VoIP to lower telephony prices dramatically, even more radical 
innovators
threaten to lower the cost of a phone call to zero-to make it free.

The VoIP insurrection over the last decade marks a milestone in
communication history no less dramatic than the arrival of the 
telephone in
1876. We know data networks and packetized voice will displace the long
standing pre-1995 world rooted in Alexander Graham Bell's invention. It
remains uncertain whether telecom's incumbent carriers and equipment 
makers
will continue to dominate or even survive as the information technology
industry absorbs voice as a simple application of the Internet.

The roots of the VoIP insurrection trace back to four synchronistic 
events
in 1968. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled MCI could 
compete
with AT&T using microwave transport on the Chicago to St. Louis route. 
The
same year, the FCC's Carterfone decision forced AT&T to allow customers 
to
attach non-Western Electric equipment, such as new telephones, and 
modems,
to the telephone network. The Department of Defense's Advanced Research
Project Agency issued a contract to Bolt Beranek and Newman for a 
precursor
to the Internet. And in July 1968, Andrew Grove and Gordon Moore founded
Intel. Innovation in the communication sector remained the proprietary 
right
of AT&T for most the 20th century, but events in 1968 breached the 
barriers
that kept the telecom and information technology industries apart. For 
the
first two-thirds of the 20th century, AT&T had manned Berlin Wall 
separating
telecommunications and computing, but eventually, these two enormous
technology tracks would be unified.

Two entrepreneurs barely out of their teens, Lior Haramaty and Alon 
Cohen,
founded VocalTec Communications in 1993 based on the promise of packet 
voice
technology they observed as members of the Israel Defense Force. Most
military command and control used the highly survivable TCP/IP 
distributed
data networks since the 1980's. The challenge of transporting voice 
over the
networks arose as an imperative to support certain very sensitive voice
commands like "drop the bomb", but the idea of commercializing packet 
voice
did not occur to anyone until the arrival of Lior and Alon. How could
slicing voice into 50 millisecond packets improve the telephone 
business?
The tradition bound telephone industry types or "bellheads" spent their 
time
before 1995 improving the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) not
replacing it.

Advances in communication from writing and paper to the printing press,
telegraph, and telephone shape human progress. Some might have viewed 
VoIP
as an interesting toy in 1995, but no one presently doubts it will 
dominate
the communication future. The economies of scale associated with growing
customer awareness and competition will produce a Moores Law like 
virtuous
cycle of communication innovation.

<snip>

see www.voipdaily.com


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