11.1. The Problems
with Traditional Telephony
Although Alexander Graham Bell is most famously
remembered as the father of the telephone, the reality is that
during the latter half of the 1800s, dozens of minds were at work
on the project of carrying voice over telegraph lines. These people
were mostly business-minded folks, looking to create a product
through which they might make their fortunes.
We have come to think of traditional telephone
companies as monopolies, but this was not true in their early days.
The early history of telephone service took place in a very
competitive environment, with new companies springing up all over
the world, often with little or no respect for the patents they
might be violating. Some of the monopolies got their start through
the waging (and winning) of patent wars.
It's interesting to contrast the history of the
telephone with the history of Linux and the Internet. While the
telephone was created as a commercial exercise, and the telecom
industry was forged through lawsuits and corporate takeovers, Linux
and the Internet arose out of the academic community, which has
always valued the sharing of knowledge over profit.
The cultural differences are obvious.
Telecommunications technologies tend to be closed, confusing, and
expensive, while networking technologies are generally open, well
documented, and competitive.
11.1.1. Closed Thinking
If one compares the culture of the
telecommunications industry to that of the Internet, it is
sometimes difficult to believe the two are related. The Internet
was designed by enthusiasts, whereas contributing to the
development of the PSTN is impossible for any individual to
contemplate. This is an exclusive club; membership is not open to
just anyone.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
clearly exhibits this type of closed thinking . If you want
access to their knowledge, you have to be prepared to pay for it.
Membership requires proof of your qualifications, and you will be
expected to pay tens of thousands of dollars in annual dues.
Although the ITU is the United Nations's
sanctioned body responsible for international telecommunications,
many of the VoIP protocols (SIP, MGCP, RTP, STUN) come not from the
hallowed halls of the ITU, but rather from the IETF (which
publishes all of its standards free to all, and allows anyone to
submit an Internet Draft for consideration).
Open protocols such as SIP may have a tactical
advantage over ITU protocols such as H.323 due to the ease with
which one can obtain them. Although H.323 is widely deployed by
carriers as a VoIP protocol in the backbone, it is much more
difficult to find H.323-based endpoints; newer products are far
more likely to support SIP.
The success of the IETF's open approach has not
gone unnoticed by the mighty ITU. It has recently become possible
to download up to three documents free of charge from the ITU web
site. Openness is clearly on their minds. Recent
statements by the ITU suggest that there is a desire to achieve
"Greater participation in ITU by civil society and the academic
world." Mr. Houlin Zhao, the ITU's Director of the
Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), believes that "ITU
should take some steps to encourage this."
The roadmap to achieving this openness is
unclear, but they are beginning to realize the inevitable.
As for Asterisk, it embraces both the past and
the futureH.323 support is available, although the community has
for the most part shunned H.323 in favor of the IETF protocol SIP
and the darling of the Asterisk community, IAX.
11.1.2. Limited Standards
Compliancy
One of the oddest things about all the standards
that exist in the world of legacy telecommunications is the various
manufacturers' seeming inability to implement them consistently.
Each manufacturer desires a total monopoly, so the concept of
interoperability tends to take a back seat to being first to market
with a creative new idea.
The ISDN protocols are a classic example of
this. Deployment of ISDN was (and in many ways still is) a painful
and expensive proposition, as each manufacturer decided to
implement it in a slightly different way. ISDN could very well have
helped to usher in a massive public data network, 10 years before
the Internet. Unfortunately, due to its cost, complexity, and
compatibility issues, ISDN never delivered much more than voice,
with the occasional video or data connection for those willing to
pay. ISDN is quite common (especially in Europe, and in North
America in larger PBX implementations), but it is not delivering
anywhere near the capabilities that were envisioned for it.
As VoIP becomes more and more ubiquitous, the
need for ISDN will disappear.
11.1.3. Slow Release Cycles
It can take months, or sometimes years, for the
big guys to admit to a trend, let alone release a product that is
compatible with it. It seems that before a new technology can be
embraced, it must be analyzed to death, and then it must pass
successfully through various layers of bureaucracy before it is
even scheduled into the development cycle. Months or even years
must pass before any useful product can be expected. When those
products are finally released, they are often based on hardware
that is obsolete; they also tend to be expensive and to offer no
more than a minimal feature set.
These slow release cycles simply don't work in today's world of
business communications. On the Internet, new ideas can take root
in a matter of weeks and become viable in extremely short periods
of time. Since every other technology must adapt to these changes,
so too must telecommunications.
Open source development is inherently better
able to adapt to rapid technological change, which gives it an
enormous competitive advantage.
The spectacular crash of the telecom industry
may have been caused in large part by an inability to change.
Perhaps that continued inability is why recovery has been so slow.
Now, there is no choice: change, or cease to be. Community-driven
technologies such as Asterisk will see to that.
11.1.4. Refusing to Let Go of the Past
and Embrace the Future
Traditional telecommunications companies have
lost touch with their customers. While the concept of adding
functionality beyond the basic telephone is well understood, the
idea that the user should be the one defining this functionality is
not.
Nowadays, people have nearly limitless
flexibility in every other form of communication. They simply
cannot understand why telecommunications cannot be delivered as
flexibly as the industry has been promising for so many years. The
concept of flexibility is not familiar to the telecom industry, and
very well might not be until open source products such as Asterisk
begin to transform the fundamental nature of the industry. This is
a revolution similar to the one Linux and the Internet willingly
started over 10 years ago (and IBM unwittingly started with the PC,
15 years before that). What is this revolution? The commoditization
of telephony hardware and software ,
enabling a proliferation of tailor-made telecommunications
systems. |
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