[geeks] IP telephony

[David Cantrell]

On Fri, Jan 18, 2002 at 10:32:21AM -0500, Andrew Weiss wrote:
> I haven't really been interested, nor have I been following this field for
> a while, since I have always had the gut feeling that when this gets good
> enough the phone companies will kill it, and currently it isn't good
> enough... (am I mistaken?)... Case in point, I have the marketing head
> asking me about IP telephony for his house.  He does have cable modem
> services, and is looking for a standalone type of device.  Is there a
> really good vendor for this market and an existing product I can
> recommend?  Most IP telephony I'm familiar with requires a large equipment
> outlay, and is suitable for large providers.  (I'm also only vaguely
> familiar with said equipment)

There are several vendors of 'consumer' oriented IP phones.  My main
concern with them is that they all rely on a third-party company to run
the IP-to-POTS bit - that third-party being a damned sight more likely to
disappear than the POTS - and that they rely on an existing data service
to work.  Consumer data services are all less reliable than consumer POTS
IME.

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
 (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless
 series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary"  -- H. L. Mencken