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Story: Can you trust VoIP?

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An excellent article.
For too long now certain interested parties have been trying to hype VoIP services, in some cases well before its time. Predicitions that the major voice carriers will fail have not come true and are unlikely to as they are adopting VoIP technology too. VoIp as a technology is good. That does not mean the service that are offered are.
Much of the hype about Internet Voice services has come from the US where (despite media reports to the contrary) telephone calls are actually quite expensive due to local and federal taxes and access surcharges. In this environment VoIP services are often cheaper simply because they don't pay these additional fees (yet!). The economics of VoIP services in the US are, therefore, based on false accounting.
Elsewhere, where such taxes and surcharges don't apply, it is possible to buy traditional voice services at cheaper rates than many VoIP services.

This article also allused to something which is very important to realise: Voice across the Internet is not a service. It is a facilty. It contains very few of the aspects that make up a voice service (such as monitoring and responsibility for faults or degradation) that a real voice service provides.

Yes, it can be cheaper (especially with the current preferential tax treatment in the US), but the comparison is not equal. You are not getting the same for your money. Let's see Vonage sort out your service next time your ISP has capacity or peering problems. Anyone who doesn't believe me should get a visit to a large telco NOC and see the amount of effort that goes into making your phone server work.

The winners in the VoIP game are not the fly-by-night Internet Voice players, but thos carriers and ISPs that can harness the technology, complete with all the service wrap, to offer something approaching the service that customers already have from traditional voice services.

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