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Network World,
09/11/00
Voice
There's been a lot of talk about new voice services, such as voice over DSL. What's the deal?
Kearns: Voice over DSL has got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of. Here we take a technology that puts digital over voice lines. Now we want to burrow voice through that digital line. What do we do next?
Gibbs: The only problem is, that while it sounds stupid, it actually makes a lot of sense. Although it's a voice line, it's a piece of copper, and DSL is just another way of using it. If you can get more value out of the 'voice line' by putting voice on DSL, you're looking at gaining something - that's the only reason you'd do it. It only sounds stupid when you say voice over digital over voice. Say 'voice over digital over copper,' and it makes sense.
McClimans: Is there anything you can't put voice over? There are always going to be situations where there's a particular hardware implementation that makes sense for somebody's environment. So I view all of these voice-over-anything technologies as really just being different flavors of ice cream. And Dave, I tend to agree with you on voice over DSL being somewhat ludicrous and awkward. But I see a lot of people implementing it or looking to implement it.
Kearns: Why, because of their infrastructures?
McClimans: I think in many cases they've been sold on the value, perhaps the cost-saving value, by their particular service provider of moving to a DSL infrastructure.
Taylor: The key to using DSL for voice is that until we have some other model, there's at least a pretty direct relationship between the cost or price per voice line and the number of copper pairs you're using. When you start using DSL, depending on your flavor of DSL, you can get from a handful to a whole lot of voice lines across a single copper pair.
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