The Future Of IP Telephony: A Panel Discussion At INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO

BY RICH TEHRANI

As the VoIP market continues its torrid growth rate, we must realize that traditional PSTN communications are slowly becoming legacy telecom while IP telephony becomes today’s telecom standard. At some point in the early 1980s, corporations realized that buying a fixed function word processor from a company like Wang made no sense. It wasn’t expandable and couldn’t grow with them and was limited in feature set. Similarly, two decades later the traditional PBX is becoming a relic. Purchasing a traditional PBX is like buying a cassette powered walkman instead of an MP3 player. An MP3 player allows you to do so much more like skip quickly between songs, hold thousands of songs, and the quality of digital is better than that of analog tape.

This analogy continues into the workplace where a career-ending decision would be to buy legacy telecom when IP telephony can do so much more and will allow you to take advantage of your investment through the addition of new applications. At the upcoming Internet Telephony Conference & Expo next week in Miami, we have assembled a leading panel of experts to discuss The Future of IP telephony.

It’s a given that VoIP is here to stay but what can we expect from this point onward? I decided to get the ball rolling by asking a few questions from some of the panel participants now so you could get a feel for what this session will be like. If you want to hear more, be sure to be at the show on Wednesday, February 11^th at 4:30 PM. Participants include MCI, Cisco Systems, Quintum, Lucent Technologies, Qovia, Alcatel, Snom. You have likely heard that the show has sold out. Our attendance is on track to make this the largest Miami event we have ever had. More exciting is the fact that there are so many new exhibitors in the market. I promise you haven’t seen many of these companies anywhere. I can’t wait to see it all for myself. While you’re at the show, be sure to also check out Tehrani’s IP Telephony Killer Apps which takes place on Thursday, February 12^th at 5:30 PM. See you at the Hyatt Regency Miami. Enjoy this Q&A section.

Rich Tehrani is TMC's president. He welcomes your comments. Participate in our forums.