* IP PBXs drive renewed interest in wide-area VoIP
We recently noted signs of recovery in the WAN, in the enterprise and service provider markets. This time, we’d like to address a specific WAN area that is doing surprisingly well: voice over IP. During the past 12 to 24 months, interest in the VoIP market has skyrocketed. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the majority of enterprise activity has been driven from the LAN and traditional TDM voice groups. This marks a distinct change in how VoIP is viewed.
We recently noted signs of recovery in the WAN, in the enterprise and service provider markets. This time, we’d like to address a specific WAN area that is doing surprisingly well: voice over IP.
During the past 12 to 24 months, interest in the VoIP market has skyrocketed. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the majority of enterprise activity has been driven from the LAN and traditional TDM voice groups. This marks a distinct change in how VoIP is viewed.
We’ve often discussed VoIP (and other packet voice options) in this newsletter from the WAN services perspective. The driver for transporting voice in a packet format over the long haul has been toll bypass – getting pretty good-quality long-distance voice services less expensively than you can get them from a traditional TDM carrier.
Toll bypass has been attractive in international markets. But it’s tough to justify a wholesale change in network equipment in North America, when you can buy a prepaid calling card from Sam’s Club that entitles you to domestic long-distance calling at 3.47 cents per minute.
Instead, we’re seeing VoIP’s impact on the WAN as a side effect of movement toward replacing traditional PBXs with IP PBXs. The strongest business justification for this change is the strategic advantages of converged voice-centric applications, such as unified messaging, Web-based multimedia call centers, and collaborative computing. There’s also strong interest in IP PBXs to replace traditional, aging PBXs that are due for upgrades or wholesale replacements.
Once the IP PBX is installed on the various campuses, it only makes sense to connect them over the WAN using packet services. Consequently, some of our favorite topics of the past few years, such as performance management and quality-of-service appliances, are cycling back into the spotlight for corporate network planners.
