Time to Put Down the Old Dog
May 1, 2009
The tremors of the coming deep recession should be shaking communications and IT managers right out of their shoes. So much has be bandied about regarding the impact of the recession on IT and communications spending that the only thing that can match words with the speculation is the U.S. Broadband Stimulus package. We are either going to live through the worst disaster ever, or the greatest thing that ever happened. In either case, the IT and communications buyers have a perfect opportunity to seriously examine VoIP Peering.
In any other economic situation rosier than this the IT and communications managers escape the challenge of having to learn something new by making their day-jobs of dealing with putting out fires look like they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. The truth is that they should be looking at the future as well as the present. VoIP Peering is not really that complicated. They only think it is because they do not understand it. Old dogs wanting to learn new tricks is even more of a rarity then being able to teach them new ones.
The high-level analysis for the current economy is fairly simple:
- How much do you spend across your enterprise in a month/year on voice including local access, origination and termination?
- How many providers do you have immediate access to for those services?
If the answer to #2 is less than 5 it is a pretty good bet that the answer to #1 is 50-75 percent higher than it should be. When you think of voice in the IP domain your telephone closet becomes your gateway to the world and not just the RBOC, a CLEC and three IXC's. Linear TDM interconnects become dynamic SIP trunks and real diversity and redundancy can be achieved. Or, you can keep doing things the way they have been done for 20 years and pay too much for it. It's time to put down the old dog and get on with it.
The limitation with VoIP Peering isn't technology, it's awareness.
Hunter Newby was the Chief Strategy Officer and a Director of a Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation focused on the communications industry at the time of this publishing.
Originally published in Internet Telephony magazine, May 2009.
