The Decade of VoIP

By: Erin E. Harrison

It seems like almost yesterday that we were all bringing in the new millennium, and worrying that the world would come to an end as the clock struck midnight. With the first decade of the 21st century nearly over, I thought I would reflect on the decade. To help me along the way, I spoke with Philippe Babin, the general manager for Media5 Corporation (News - Alert), an industry leader in the development of VoIP solutions and services.

EH: I am calling this the decade of VoIP, but really there were many times when they were calling for the death of VoIP.

PB: True, throughout the last 10 years it seemed that more times than not critics were counting VoIP out.

EH: Did you ever doubt that VoIP would work?

PB: There are always uncertainties, however we truly believed in our direction and this new technology called VoIP – after all we have been developing VoIP products from its onset. Early in the decade, VoIP was in its infancy, with challenges surrounding
voice quality, reliability, interoperability and security. The industry also faced the challenges created by the dot-com meltdown, which had significant impacts on both investment in technology as well as communications infrastructure.

There was also reluctance amongst the major service providers to promote VoIP. Early on it was an argument about voice quality, but over time it became more about protection of their revenue base, even as developers brought new solutions to the market, offering better and better voice quality and reliability.

Finally, a major hurdle for VoIP has been the public’s understanding of what exactly VoIP was, its benefits and value to enterprises, service providers and consumers. A key challenge has been getting out the message that VoIP provides wonderful opportunities, and is certainly not just a technology to use on a computer. But I am glad to say that VoIP now is a fundamental component of our modern telecommunication systems.

EH: We are now ready to turn the corner on a new decade. What does the future hold for VoIP?

PB: VoIP will be a significant catalyst for change in the way that service providers, enterprises and consumers use communications. VoIP takes on different names and forms: be it IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystems) for service providers looking to voice, video, wireless and IP systems around SIP or unified communications in the enterprise world. We have not reached market saturation anywhere in the world. The current economic slowdown has had little effect on the VoIP market. A recent report showed that in the enterprise segment, VoIP users had continued to rise to over 28 percent in 2008 and it is expected to be over 50 percent by 2012.

Challenged by the new generation of “over Internet” services providers, traditional telcos around the world are considering the use of IMS or UC system to differentiate themselves. Should it be over wireless, WiMax, copper lines or fiber optics, to protect their market segment or expand into new regions.

Beyond this, we believe that as VoIP and SIP evolve, users will expect broader capabilities. We feel that security and survivability will become ever-more important capabilities in enhanced VoIP solutions. Our plan is to ensure that our solutions are leaders in these areas. With our Media5Boss solutions on one side, but also our easy to customize software and hardware platforms, we enable the service providers to thoroughly differentiate themselves by offering well proven technologies.

This year we released the Media5Boss-Branch, an advanced, all-in-one suite of cost-effective solutions designed to offer security and survivability in multi-site, branch office environments. We are convinced that these offerings will meet the needs of organizations looking to deploy security and survivability into their overall telecommunications infrastructure.

We are also seeing some exciting developments in the area of mobility. Offices today are anywhere and everywhere. We have recently introduced several interesting mobility solutions to provide enhanced and integrated communications for an enterprise’s mobile worker.

Media5Boss-Mobility, a powerful all-in-one solution for secure fixed mobile convergence.

Media5-Fone, a SIP Client (softphone) that runs on the Apple (News - Alert) iPhone.

As well as the Mobility SDK, a software development kit, allowing service providers to easily create their customized, secure SIP-based applications that can run directly on the iPhone (News - Alert).

While there are challenges ahead, we are excited by the opportunities that the next decade will provide, and we are already at work on the next wave of solutions. IT

To learn more about Media5 Corporation and its line of leading VoIP solutions and services, please visit www.media5corp.com or [email protected].

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