COMMENTARY--Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) looks to be the next big deal, a business disrupter that could change everything in the telecoms world. The first service offerings have been launched and customer . . .

The first service offerings have been launched and customer take-up has been rapid. Of course, the big selling point is a 10-fold price reduction over the telephone offerings of the incumbents. Other benefits include the end of charging based on distance and service, more customer control and choice and a bevy of new services not currently available from telcos. But like so many new developments, all is not necessarily as advertised on the box.

It is easy to criticize the telcos for being slow, ponderous, expensive, backward looking and controlling, though they have one redeeming quality that is the envy of IT--reliability.


Over 100 years of continual engineering development have led to performance standards from telcos that have yet to be attained by other industries. The transmission quality and call completion rate are monitored and maintained globally to a very high standard. And the established reliability of a local switch is the fabled 5 x 9s, or 99.999 per cent uptime--that's a yearly downtime of less than five minutes. This is an impressive number that is not easily achieved without the duplication of switching and control circuits and power supplies. Contrast this with other technologies that we enjoy and you will see what I mean. Such performance has led to the notion that you can always rely on the telephone no matter what. This is not something that can be said of mobile networks or indeed VoIP, where I sometimes think it would be nice to see reliability figures exceeding 9 x 5s (55.5555555 per cent).

The link for this article located at Peter Cochrane, Silicon.com is no longer available.