IP Telphony

VOIP----What is it?

I am going to assume that if you are reading this you already know or know enough to Google it and get a much more eloquent definition than I can render here.

Its a buzz word! I recently attended a function where I ran into a "phone guy" and I asked him how business was. He replied "Great we have started doing VOIP!" When I asked him what product, and he offered up one of the many names (starts with A) out of Silicon Valley.As he was excitedly extolling the virtues of V-O-I-P, I asked "does it use SIP?" He hesitated and said "Yeah it'll do SIP!" just to be obnoxious I asked. "What does SIP stand for?" He looked at me kind of funny and replied, " Don't you know?" " Yes , I know. Do you?" I replied. He mumbled something and excused himself.

Folks, one of the things that makes a great "phone guy" is that he really knows his stuff. The old guys like my Dad new everything about telephony. Will the new age of IP telephony change that?Let's hope not!

Dad had been in the business 20 plus years when the digital switch came around. He was a little flustered by the computer interface and the programming. But Dad in a premier example of "old phone guy" determination, buckled down and learned it. I heard him say many times during that challenging time in his career, "It's still a telephone." No matter what happens to Alexander Graham Bell's marvelous invention, let us not forget that it still must act like a telephone. And let us not forget that our customers still buy our gear and our services for one overshadowing reason---TO MAKE TELEPHONE CALLS.

Assess the real needs of your customers and give them the system that makes the most sense.
AND----if you are going to "do voip" do it for the right reasons. And please, buckle down and learn it. IP telephony runs on a data network. Learn how data networks function.

Just Another Manic Monday

Well here goes! I read recently that some IT companies would not take you seriously unless you had a web presence ie a blog.

Now I have never worried too much about being taken seriously however, as a well know gadget guru, technophile, geeky nerdy on the bleeding edge of technology kind of guy...I really don't know how I have gone this long without my very own blog.
I have been led to believe that a blog should be posted to every day like a diary and should talk about what you are doing or have done that day like a diary. Guess what, I AIN'T gonna do that!

Let's talk instead about the things that matter most to me and hope nobody reads this!

So since I have spent my whole life in the telecommunications industry (one of my earliest fond memories is of sitting on a packing crate in a STEP office in Okolona , Arkansas, strapping blocks for my Dad) that is probably what I will talk about the most.

Right now since I am in the process of negotiating a fairly big deal for a multi-location fiber WAN, I have been pondering the commodity status of bandwidth. Like many of the things in our industry that are not exactly as they should be, this is a self inflicted wound. The 64 million dollar question is what do we do about it? My answer......I don't know! Maybe we don't be quite so willing to cut each others throats? Easier said than done in a corporate climate that doesn't take excuses and failure is not an option.