John Linton
....is an old theory Steve reminded me about when Exetel's VoIP line capacity was reached around 1.00 pm yesterday.
Up to yesterday our VoIP switches had never exceeded 66% of the line capacity connecting our VoIP services to the PSTN carrier networks in Australia.
The closest we had gone in the past was prior to the last big line capacity upgrade during Chinese New Year.
Since the beginning of 2008 we have more than trebled the number of VoIP minutes transiting our VoIP switches and that trend is 'steepening' as Exetel ADSL users accelerate their take up of Exetel VoIP services. This has been partly due to the introduction of the free VoIP services included with the 'naked' ADSL plans, partly because of the increasing penetration of the Exetel calling cards but it's mainly due to the take up by 'non-Naked' ADSL customers.
This article in today's IT News:
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/18157/127/
presents some analysis on the trends of Australian users to 'dump' their use of fixed wire line services in favour of mobile and VoIP alternatives - particularly in the rental market - but it really doesn't say much more than has already been evident for some time to anyone in the telco industry space.
It's a clear trend that ADSL users are moving much of their wire line telephone spending to VoIP (over and above the people who select 'Naked' ADSL) and it underscores the rapid, and increasing, take up of HSPA services from all four carriers who offer them. I'm constantly told by the carriers we have contact with that they are in no hurry to provide HSPA via wholesale as they can't keep up with the retail demand since they first made the services available.
I can fully understand that view - up to a point (its a 'new' service and they need to get their major distribution channel fully functioning before expanding the methods of distribution) - but still find it a little bizarre that today's carriers seem to have lost sight of the reasons why all major service and equipment 'manufacturers' in every country in the world since 1780 have understood the unbeatable benefits of multiple distribution models - for any business.
Having digressed, the issues that now needs to be more directly addressed by Exetel is determining how best to expand the functions and capacities of our current VoIP services which we have grown relatively slowly over the past 2+ years and how we can integrate an HSPA and mobile service in to our main product/service offerings.
All this is made very difficult without having an HSPA service defined.
It seems clear enough that we should add another VOIP switch both for additional capacity but more importantly for redundancy in terms of both the switchs and the circuits to and from the switches. Easy enough, if expensive to do - but the expense can be more easily justified now as the VoIP business has grown so rapidly and shows every indication of continuing to grow even more rapidly.
However, what isn't clear, at least to me, is whether we should add additional switching capacity in Sydney or begin to 'distribute' it to the other PoPs.
What also isn't at all clear is when/if we begin to offer an HSPA service and when/if we implement a direct mobile access to a mobile carrier network how we need to do that in terms of both topology and cost-effectiveness.
What is clear is that VoIP is becoming a bigger part of our business and taking more resources (both financial and personnel) more rapidly that we had previously planned for.
I probably should be embarrassed by having to say that because the signs and trends have been so obvious for so long but, like some trends, they happen over such a long period of time ("VoIP is going to really happen 'next year' since 1995") that when this really is the year people like me tend to still get surprised. I have alreaady forgotten that both my calls from the handset on my office desk and all my calls from my home are via VoIP - I just don't think about it and it now surprises me when people I meet talk about the complexities of setting up VoIP or the lower call quality of VoIP - in 2008 neither of those views is true.
Chinese New Year and now Mother's Day have underlined just how much VoIP has become the telephone communication method of choice in Australia in 2008.