November 1999

VoIP: Part V— Taking The Prophet Position
(A Cautious Peek Into The Future)

BY LIOR HARAMATY

In my first four columns, I’ve discussed down-to-earth issues that focused on today’s IP telephony business and technology opportunities. In this month’s column, I’m taking a risk and putting forth my predictions of where the Internet communications industry is going for the residential market. What will the communications future look like? Will “telephony” be a word that we’ll have to explain to our grandchildren? Over what medium and with what devices or lack of devices will we be conversing in the new millennium?

Let me begin with my conclusion — the key to the future is bandwidth. The lack of ubiquitous and unlimited bandwidth is still a major stumbling block in the use of globally deployed multimedia and advanced IP communications applications in our everyday lives. However, it is my belief that in a few years, bandwidth will no longer be the industry hurdle that it is today. Which data transport technology will ultimately prevail is as yet unclear, though I’m sure that if you are reading this, at least one of your dreams is having a T3 line connected directly to your living room. Whether data comes streaming into our homes over fiber, wireless, or a quantum “thingamjig,” your suburban curb will be connected via a very large info pipe to what we might call the “H-Internet”, a super Hi-bandwidth Internet. But what is going to be transmitted on this “give me one today” dream of ours?

Let’s have a quick review of advancements in today’s communications products that provide a glimpse of the future for communications.

Television
TV is already going digital and it is improving TV quality (though I can’t vouch for the content) in the same way CDs improved home stereo quality. Already, digital TV sets are being sold for reasonable prices. And that’s only the beginning. Standard Digital TV (SDTV) and High-Definition TV (HDTV) broadcasting is already available in some areas, in limited schedules, heightening the TV experience even more by showing us pictures at a quality so high it’s incomparable in picture and sound to today’s television, and it’s all digital.

While digital broadcasting will soon be mandatory, satellite broadcasting is already bringing digital broadcasting to many people in many parts of the world. Satellite broadcasting is a partial implementation of the “info pipe” I referred to earlier, but it’s not quite enough to support the massive data transport necessary to interact with the characters in the Star Wars trilogy on your hovercraft’s IP view screen. Today’s satellite broadcasting has some limitations. The most significant problem is line delay — the time it takes to transmit information to the satellite and back to earth. Line delay introduced by satellites is usually too long for real-time applications such as VoIP. The infrastructure for new low-orbit satellite networks is currently being built and will provide better transport. Another problem is that most of the home systems are unidirectional, or support very low upstream bandwidth.

Once the bandwidth problem is solved, we should be able to see any movie or program we want whenever and wherever, just like retrieving a file from a network file server. And, of course, we’ll be watching — with HDTV quality or higher — 3D images from any angle we choose.

Telephone
Think about a phone call with video as an option. (Still in your pajamas?) Imagine top-notch, better-than-CD fidelity and surround sound anywhere in your home. I didn’t want to go as far as implants, but who knows? Don’t be surprised how quickly advancements in this technology will take place. Many calls are already taking place over the Internet (transparent to the user), and we can’t ignore the growing popularity of PC-to-phone, Web-to-corporate call center, and multipoint, voice plus data collaboration PC-to-PC solutions for more convenient, cost effective and productive communications. Better dress up for that phone call.

Newspaper
You want us to mail you your magazine? You mean snail mail? Newspaper distribution is going digital as well. Witness ESPN online, The New York Times (and Internet Telephony� magazine of course…). As this business grows and we become more and more accustomed to getting our news when and where we want it, new devices will hit the market that can display or print content in a more favorable and portable form for reading than PC screens. There will be personal preferences for deciding how to read or listen to a publication, perhaps on an electronic pad or a direct eye projector. Media type will blend together — which one is a newspaper, which one is TV news? It’s all Internet News. Whatever the form, the content or data can all be delivered digitally to the home, office, park, beach….

Shopping
Who knows better than I that online shopping opportunities already exist on today’s Internet. (Yes, I “sponsor” many sites). It’s where I go to buy books, CDs, cars… But the experience should be much better. No thumbnail images for the product you want to buy, no five-second low-quality clips for the songs you want, but perfect display — image and sound — of what’s available. Imagine crystal-clear conversations with sales representatives giving 3D video tours of your dream home. Get your credit card ready. Or should I say your “Charge-O-Net?”

Music
Getting music and live content from channels (soon to be formerly known as radio) will be simple and global
in the new age of big pipes. People will be able to listen to shows or songs real time or store it for later listening, perhaps on a key-chain memo module and with tremendous levels of quality. New songs by Shinon Lennon (the granddaughter) will be available on global virtual channels with Spherical Sound, Virtual Location Sound and ExploroSound. If you have the bandwidth (and you will…), you can get it all.

Events
Once again, the real world is catching up with the fantasy world as plenty of web surfers are purchasing tickets to shows and concerts online. If the virtual world of entertainment from your future info-enabled home is still not enough, the H-Internet will provide electronic brochures and better-than-life video clips for travel, shows, theme parks, museums, sports, dining… And fast. No waiting only to get “http error 404 – file not found.” In the future, the info waits for you, not you for the info.

The above predictions for the comunications industry are natural developments derived from today’s applications and technologies. They are the types of conventions that might appear in the nearer rather than distant future. Clearly the amount of information that will be available on the H-Internet will be huge. Sorting through the tons of data might be a challenge but getting it will be a breeze. The key to realizing this future is bandwidth and I believe we are well on the road to making it happen — today’s wild ideas will be tomorrow’s reality. 

Lior Haramaty is a co-founder of VocalTec Communications and belongs to the original group that started the VoIP industry. Haramaty has dealt with passing audio over data networks since the late 80s. VocalTec started shipping VoIP products in the early 90s. Haramaty has a multidisciplinary background in the business, technology and marketing fields, is a co-inventor on VoIP patents, and has initiated and spear-headed standards activities in the industry. The goal of this column is to clearly explain issues related to voice (and other media) over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to anyone, including the “acronym-impaired” person. Requests for future column subjects are welcomed. Please write to [email protected].