Cable Forum - Gossiptel

Anybody using Gossiptel Voice over ip telephone service with NTL cable modem? Does it work? You will soon be able to transfer your home phone number to this service so that you do not have to pay the BT line rental and get cheaper calls. Why are NTL not offering this service?
http://www.gossiptel.com/

Ringing the changes

As the ability to make domestic calls over the net becomes reality, could it spell doom for companies such as BT, asks Ben Hammersley

Thursday September 2, 2004
The Guardian

If you lift up your telephone receiver and listen very carefully, you will hear the quiet but increasing rumble of technological inevitability. The telephone network is, without doubt, moving to the internet. It will be a huge change, and one that will result in many casualties - perhaps even bringing down BT itself. Here's why.

Online has devoted a great deal of space to the subject of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in the past few months. This is the technique of sending telephone calls over the internet instead of the specialist phone network, and it has grown rapidly in the past few years. Whereas it was once a crackly joke, today it provides call quality as good as - if not better than - your existing landline connection.

With VoIP and the nifty stuff that comes with it becoming more and more common both at school and in the workplace, increased demand for domestic facilities seems inevitable. When we are at home, why can't we have cheap-as-free telephone calls, video conferencing or voicemail that follows us around? Why can't we have telephones that know - like VoIP phones do now - when we are busy on our computers and cannot be disturbed? Why can't we have telephones that tell us it is not worth calling Aunt Mildred because she is already on the line to somebody else, but that she'd prefer an instant message instead? Last month BT announced the start of major new trials of its so-called 21st Century Network, testing a dedicated VoIP as a precursor to a massive migration of its existing network from 2006.

But while BT is converting the entire phone network into VoIP, other companies are using the internet to provide the same services. Tiny start-ups such as Gossiptel can already provide customers with VoIP telephones, the associated cool features, and call charges around 50% lower than BT. The only thing required is for the customer to have a broadband internet connection.

Previously, that caveat would have disguised a whole series of drawbacks: broadband connections needing an existing telephone line, for which you would be paying line rental, and from which you could not move your number. Moving to VoIP is, of course, less attractive if you need to tell everyone a new telephone number, and loses its lustre almost entirely if you have to continue to pay for your old phone anyway.

But no longer. From next month, on the orders of the media and telecommunications regulatory body Ofcom, British customers will be able to buy "naked DSL". This means the broadband connection no longer requires the payment of a telephone line rental.

Furthermore, in a rather controversial move, you will also be able to transfer your existing landline telephone number to your VoIP provider. At the moment, a Gossiptel number starts with an 0870 prefix, but from next month the company says it will be able to transfer your existing number. All the company requires is five days to complete the transfer and you will be free from the yoke of line rental forever.

Of course, BT says there is a major difference between telephone calls made over a dedicated network and those over the common internet. "We want to be absolutely clear that using IP technology in our network for our premium-quality voice services is a gulf apart from the new budget voice over the internet services being launched almost daily by a wide range of providers," says Paul Reynolds, the chief executive of BT Wholesale.

Fine words, but the question for the average consumer is "so what?" Given that internet-based VoIP is proving increasingly adequate for the job, will customers care enough for any advantages that BT's enormous investment in a dedicated network will bring?

Whether or not customers migrate to internet-based VoIP or stick with existing providers, it represents a challenge for BT. The latest figures show that the company is suffering a net loss of 100,000 customers a month. To make the situation worse, the company was recently forced to slash the amount it charges to internet service providers for broadband connections in a bid to prevent Ofcom from breaking the company up. And it is these very connections that allow VoIP companies to threaten BT's incumbency.

The one remaining reason behind the reluctance to switch to independent VoIP - power supply - is also becoming less relevant in the face of new technology. Many rivals have asked loudly what happens to VoIP devices, which require a separate electricity supply, if there is a power cut.

What if you need to call the fire brigade or an ambulance and you find your telephone is dead? BT and other national carriers are bound by law to make sure the service remains in operation exactly for this purpose. Independent VoIP operators,however, are not. So wouldn't people die if this situation took hold? Don't be silly, say the VoIP vendors, it is not a case of either/or - you would use your mobile instead.

This increasingly pragmatic view is part of the general trend of installing one large internet connection and running everything on top of it. Many modern housing developments in Sweden, Japan and the US are pioneering this approach, with telephones, broadband internet, cable television and home automation controls all run over a single wire into the home.

It is both cheaper and more future-proof than putting in separate systems for everything. Indeed, given a clean slate and no existing infrastructure to worry about, VoIP seems the most sensible choice. The company behind Gossiptel, for example, used its know-how for the installation of the phone network for the new government of Afghanistan.

An irresistable digression: the Afghan government's telephone network obviously needed to have outside lines and, being VoIP, these could be connected anywhere in the world. They ended up as numbers with a Northampton dial code, and for a few confusing weeks, the Afghan foreign ministry's number in Kabul was one digit off a Northamptonshire butcher's shop. You can imagine the ensuing consequences until, tiring of the continual orders for sausages, the ministry insisted on a number change.

Meat products aside, corporations - like governments - depend on their internal phone networks. In the corporate world, too, VoIP is becoming inevitable - if for slightly banal reasons. Of course, VoIP offers a number of attractive features to those large companies using it for work purposes - conference calling, intelligent voice mail, and so on - but as the technology matures, other reasons become more apparent.

The first reason is technological support. According to Mitel, one of the world's biggest corporate VoIP equipment suppliers, half the telephone equipment in use in offices today is "orphaned". This means the manufacturers either no longer produce or support that model, or have left the market altogether. Installation of the technology, specific supplier aside, is quickly being a fait accompli.

Second, there has been a lot of comment about the low cost of VoIP. For corporate users, this runs two ways. Yes, internal phone calls are routed over the internet and are, therefore, free. Mitel says the average customer will see a switch to VoIP pay for itself in between six to nine months - one UK customer, a major high-street chain, took only four months and saved ÃƒÆ’Ã†â€™ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…Â¡ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£80,000 per store.

But what is increasingly important is that the cost of installation and management is also greatly reduced. Whereas ordinary phone systems require engineers to arrive before a new employee can be connected, these days you can put a new VoIP phone in the post and have the recipients do the less-than-technical task of plugging it in and turning it on themselves.

These cost savings are not to be sniffed at. Mitel says it won one major order on the basis that its equipment only needed one plug, while its competitor's required two. One plug meant the office manager could install it; two meant a man in the van had to be sent round to put in a new socket. On such seemingly minute details does a billion-pound industry revolve.

But, as with any major technological shift, the move to a completely VoIP world is not without growing pains. Number changes are carried out via a web interface and not, as before, by a man with a screwdriver in the basement. This is a huge cost saving for the customer, but telephone equipment resellers are finding they need fewer engineers.

Nor can they make money on adding people to, and moving them around, existing customer networks. Usually, they would send an engineer and charge a fee, but now - in a metaphor for the entire telephone industry - neither the cost nor the specialist engineers can be justified, and both are being done away with.

When telephony becomes just another internet service, what future is there for such an expensive dedication? A happy transition for customers could become incredibly painful for the small resellers. And if it is likely to hurt the smaller companies, just imagine the agony for a company the size of BT. </FONT>