“Is WebRTC 10 years too late?”
To properly answer this question, one needs to take a position. One position is to assume that all the VoIP “stuff” that came before Web Real Time Communication (WebRTC) is kind of useless. But moving to a world where SIP, G.711, and H.264 are the dominant real-time communication protocols and codecs over IP networks is not useless. The industry has gravitated to these solutions because they either add value or save costs, or both. Now that we have IP-based wireless networks with sufficient performance (such as LTE) to be an on-ramp to the internet, technology that takes advantage of that has come to the forefront. I think this movement to wireless capable networks is the real driver from 10 years ago. If WebRTC occurred 10 years ago, who knows, maybe it wouldn’t be getting the attention it is now.
Another angle with regards to the question could be related to all the investment that has gone on with SIP, making it hard to “root it out.” Remember that the TDM technology transition, that had way more capital investment, is nearing its final stages, proving that it is possible to transition technologies. If WebRTC really can add value or save costs, then widespread adoption will happen. There will be intermediary gateway type products to enable it.
I don’t think it’s 10 years too late, but we’d like to hear your views as well.
Note: On February, 20th, Dialogic in conjunction with TMCnet, ran a WebRTC webinar. In terms of number of both registrants and attendees, it was one of the most successful webinars we ever did. The webinar ran 15 minutes long and we were not able to get to some of the key questions that came in at the end. We could have gone literally another hour. This blog is part of a five- part blog series to get to the top five unanswered questions from that webinar.
