* Reader feedback on WAN costs for voice vs. data
A couple of weeks ago we made a conjecture that voice costs are starting to be insignificant when compared with data costs. Further, our belief is that soon there will no longer be any reason to track voice vs. data costs separately.
We asked for both anecdotal and quantitative feedback on what you’re thinking in this respect. There’s one clear trend from the early returns on the quantitative side: Many of you already have stopped tracking voice vs. data separately. In fact, for those of you who knew whether you track this data, a little more than half of you no longer do separate accounting.
The answers for the remaining questions concerning trends and percentage of costs for voice vs. data have been inconclusive, so we would really appreciate it if you would take a couple of minutes to answer the very few short questions at the referenced URL below.
The qualitative responses have been quite interesting. One reader gave us quite a refresher course on exactly how far we have come. He wrote: “Your comments about the decline in voice transport costs are right on point. Twenty-five years ago, a state-of-the-art corporate voice network consisted of tandem switches in major cities, a ‘mesh’ of tie lines interconnecting them, and a variety of local lines, WATS lines and foreign exchange (FX) lines bristling from each tandem switch.
“The telecom manager’s job back then was constantly fine-tuning the network. You engineered the backbone links for a particular grade of service, and did the same with the trunk group that gave a location access to that tandem hub.
“The tandem switches’ ‘hub-and-spoke’ design was a dying animal by the mid-1980s. The long distance carriers added the tandem’s functions to their switching offices, and began offering ‘postalized’ [long-distance] rates. We still used high capacity dedicated access pipes (T-1) for high volume locations, but by using a unique carrier code, it was possible to use the local exchange network as ‘switched access’ to the carriers’ private voice networks. It made no sense to make the heavy capital investment in tandem switch hardware when the LD carriers could offer a competitive cost per minute for no capital.
“Now we are at the point where that digitized voice isn’t just muxed into a digital channel. Now the digitized voice is intermingled with data packets. The ‘separate but equal’ ride for voice and data has morphed into something we’ve dubbed ‘convergence.'”
Next time we’ll finish with the user feedback – for now – on this topic.
