HD is like Fax over IP

Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

HD is like Fax over IP

In a discussion on twitter with @DougonIPcomm (that Doug blogged here), Doug is promoting the idea that HD Voice is here so buy the cheap HD Voice handsets from Polycom and Cisco now.  I think he missed my point.

Doug points to Xconnect, Simple Signal, Apteva and Sprint as examples of HD inter-connected ITSP. Big deal. There are 1100 VoIP Providers in the US alone. many not inter-connected with anyone but the PSTN.

To enjoy true HD Voice calling both sides of the call have to be SIP (supporting G.722). Most calls today still land either on a PSTN connected phone or (more likely) on a cell phone. That will break the HD Voice.

Doug dislikes this analogy but Fax over IP still doesn't work 99% today. Years after Brooktrout fixed this issue. Why? There are T.38 compliant fax machines and certainly Edgewater devices work, but the problem is in the WAN. Any conversions of the packet and you break the fax packet. So IP to PSTN, bye bye. The same issue with HD Voice. We do not have too many all IP networks.

Then let's look at the SIP Upstream providers. You mention Sprint. Most ITSP's buy from Level3, then Global Crossing, Bandwidth.com and Verizon. How many of those networks are G.722 end-to-end?

The best way to sell Hosted PBX service is to use the HD Voice demo. However, you need to set proper consumer expectations that it only works On-Net. That when Joe Sales calls in from the field on his cell phone, it will sound tinny, not HD.  

When Grandma calls in from her kitchen wall phone, it likely won't be HD either. 

Doug thinks you should buy the HD hadnset anyway. Go ahead. But if they are sub-$200 now, think what version 2 will be like price and feature wise?


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Feedback for HD is like Fax over IP

1 Comment

I completely agree that one needs to balance their enthusiasm for HD voice.

It is definitely the future, but HD penetration is so low that its relevance to the average business user is equally low.

This will change quickly over time.

In terms of faxing, 100% reliable fax over IP is present today. Check out the FaxxBochs VoIP gateway and corresponding service.

It went through a ton of field development and all of the deployments we've done to date have went without a hitch.

Garrett

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