Kenny Sallee wrote:
One thing you did mention is that telco's don't like the move to IP - what are their arguments against it?
The first argument from the ILECs is a generic one, but possibly the most important: They have very significant revenue streams, capital investments, institutional knowledge and training, business processes, technology stacks, etc. associated with TDM infrastructure that they want to protect. They already paid (a lot) for them, so they want to squeeze every last bit of ROI possible from them. Nobody likes expensive stuff to become obsolete, especially on a large scale. The second big argument generally has to do with the lack of reliability of IP gear and IP networks compared to their older, single-purpose synchronous cousins. This is generally justifiable; they've had a lot longer to get TDM right, and the vendors that do TDM well have done so for a while. The ecosystem of commercial IP gear is inherently a lot more 'open' and heterogenous, even though it may not seem like that in the enterprise network hardware segment. Without proper steps to mitigate it, which are the sorts of steps younger people have more time for, a rogue PC on the network can impact your voice service. The argument I usually hear is, "And if the Ethernet goes down, our (IP-based) softswitch service is down too. But if I keep it TDM for as long as possible and drag it into the core that way, phone will still be up." Probably, but I'm not sure it's Paereto-optimal solution. -- Alex Balashov Evariste Systems Web : http://www.evaristesys.com/ Tel : (+1) (678) 954-0670 Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671 Mobile : (+1) (678) 237-1775