* WAN transport costs for voice vs. data
Not to get nostalgic, but we’re wondering how many of our readers remember when voice transport costs exceeded data transport costs? In fact, as a historical note for the youngsters, direct digital transport for voice didn’t become commonplace until about 20 years ago. Prior to that, a significant percentage of the “data” that was transported was over the same circuits that were used for voice transport using modems – either in dial or dedicated mode.
Back in these old days, the percentage of the WAN transport costs that were used for transporting voice conversations as opposed to the percentage for data was staggering. There were a couple of obvious reasons for this ratio. First, the cost per minute – even in real dollars that were not adjusted for inflation – was incredibly high. Rates on the order of 20 cents per minute for domestic calls within the U.S. were not uncommon. Point-to-point “tie lines” to connect PBXs were available, but similarly priced.
Second, a much greater percentage of communications was accomplished via phone calls. E-mail was uncommon and unreliable. Neither the software nor the bandwidth to support software existed for the now-common practice of attaching a Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Excel file consisting of a few megabytes of data to a message. Instead, we sent overnight packages and talked about the contents on the phone.
Skipping forward to the present – and looking at the future – we’re guessing that the actual transport costs for voice is becoming an insignificant percentage of the total bandwidth costs for most organizations.
But we’d like to hear from you on this point. In addition to your usual feedback mechanism of sending us e-mail, we’ve put together a short opinion poll at Webtorials, and if you’ll be so kind as to answer a few short questions we’ll happily share the results in a future newsletter.
