Communication ISP Manifesto
Restricting VoIP to the task of traditional telephone calls is like viewing television as a platform for delivering AM radio. The promise of VoIP in connecting communication devices via the Internet represents a much better fit with the ISP model - a Communication ISP. The Communication ISP preserves global flat rate termination and click-to-connect functionality required to take full advantage of Internet connectivity. The Communication ISP asserts no constraints on the type of connected devices, applications, or content. Communication ISP connected devices offer a blank sheet of paper for end users to express their communication creativity in a manner directly analogous to traditional Information ISP's in enabling navigation of the world wide web.Interconnection with the telephone network shuts out the possibility of creativity. Everyone already knows the essential features of a telephone. The telephone network determines the nature of the application. Content is limited to those uses justified in the context of the per minute cost of telephone service. The essential offer of a Communication ISP as with existing Information ISP's is making a device addressable via the Internet. A communication device connected to the Internet need not have a telephone number or key pad at all. Addressing can be accomplished via a domain name in the same manner as any other device directly connected to the Internet.
Texas Instruments reports having shipped 450 million VoIP ports in recent years, but almost all the resulting devices connect to the telephone network rather than each other via the Internet. Communication ISP's recognize the compelling value of connecting any two VoIP devices anywhere in the world via the Internet without a per minute usage fee. Rather than depend on telephone network as the means to achieve critical mass, the Communication ISP leverages the virtuous cycle of content attracting audience and audience attracting content that drove the rapid expansion of the world web web.
The telephone did not merely represent a more efficient telegraph and VoIP does not merely enable more efficient telephone service. The measure of success for VoIP and the Communication ISP is the extent of incremental new communication enabled. Companies and individuals can leverage connected communication devices as the means to invent entirely new categories of communication. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) offers for real-time communication the same frictionless mechanism that Transport Control Protocol (TCP) offered for the file transfers associated with the sharing of information. The open platform for development associated with the Internet promises a steady stream of new applications and explosive growth in available content.
posted by Daniel @ Tuesday, August 05, 2008
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