Vint Cerf hears VoIP calling
Published: 11 Sep 2003 10:00 BST
Is VoIP the next big jump in utility?
It's really a small step in the evolution of the Internet. The more important things are likely to be grid computing. But VoIP starts the natural progression of another modality that the Internet can support. It also changes the whole of the telephony world substantially, so (VoIP) is hard to ignore.
If consumers begin adopting VoIP, who's going to use a phone company, whether it's a Bell or a long-distance company?
I haven't been a very happy camper about the regulatory positions taken on this.
It depends a lot on what traditional services you have to offer. These things become very commodity in nature. Long distance has gone that way, but it's less so for local service because there's only a modest amount of competition. The way you eventually have to make money is by adding value to the traffic, which means adding new services. That will be how you survive in this game, by adding value. If you want to be a purely commodity business and can survive, more power to you. My reaction is that I want to do something better.
Isn't VoIP's success -- for example, Vonage has 50,000 customers -- forcing traditional phone companies to adjust?
They won't disappear off the face of the earth. The businesses will change because it's a more rich application environment. We don't see ourselves as telephone companies anymore. MCI sees itself as a networking computer and communications company. We don't buy or sell computers; we support computer communication. That's an important part of our business.
What happens when the Bells complete their fibre-to-the-home expansion? Doesn't that cut out the local-phone provider, which will no longer own that local connection?
If they make good on these oft-repeated claims, it's better for everybody.
The Bells' fibre to the home initiative dredges up some pretty complex regulatory issues, correct?
I haven't been a very happy camper about the regulatory positions taken on this. These new networks all ought to be openly accessible to any ISP for a reasonable price. If that were the policy, then every customer, business or consumer would have a choice of ISPs over those broadband facilities. Under the current situation, there's almost no choice. So that's a far more restrictive environment than we had with dial-up. Broadband shouldn't be any different, but it is based on my current understanding of the triennial review by the Federal Communications Commission. I've been arguing we should really open up all these broadband facilities.
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