The Death of Telephony

The era of voice driving network investment is over. Voice is here, it is still useful, but it is almost invisible in the design of most networks being built today. Telephony Magazine had it right in changing its name to Connected Planet after more than 100 years. Telephony has become incidental, almost a free rider on the primary communications medium of today and the future–the broadband Internet. Is there any such thing as a Telephone Company anymore?

Because just about everyone had a phone, voice’s value has been its ubiquitous nature, and for the last 100 years or so it was the default means of contacting someone at a distance. Today, the Internet has seeped into virtually everyone’s life, and even my mother and my in-laws surf the web and use email. Over 2/3 of homes in the US have broadband access, and even more have some form of Internet access either through dial-up or smartphones. And with businesses, Internet access has been a staple for years, and many have migrated their phone systems to VoIP. Cisco has had great success selling VoIP phones and VoIP PBX systems to businesses large and small.

Those devices we strap to our hips and use for text, social media, email, and yes voice, are they really primarily phones anymore?  I use mine far more for Internet access than for voice, though I am not known to be especially chatty. Smartphones are becoming more and more popular, and I suspect that many people use their smartphones similarly to the way I use mine. Voice over IP (implemented as SIP, MGCP, or H.248)  is even becoming common on these devices with support for Skype and Google Voice VoIP applications.

Because people use its data capabilities so much, the iPhone is giving AT&T broadband wireless network fits. I suspect AT&T thought they were selling phones (it is called the iPHONE) to people, not IP data terminals. The super-sizing of the iPhone screen should have been a dead giveaway. Those flashy screens are surely not to improve voice communications. They are, of course, for displaying documents and pages sent over the Internet and for typing in messages.

Because we tend to gravitate to those communications methods that require the least energy, computer-based communications like email, text, and Twitter have trumped voice and paper. We send email instead of snail mail (when was the last time you wrote a letter?). We text someone rather than call them, and ironically the text message is often delivered to something called a “cellular telephone”. We send an attachment rather than printing it out and mailing or faxing it.

Interactive video is the worst energy drain and is almost completely a non-starter. We love to see the other person while they talk. We hate for someone else to see us, and that asymmetry is the sting of death for video “telephony”. Why would you ever want to have to dress and comb your hair just to let your plumber know your toilet is leaking?  Sure, video could be useful for a job interview, but how often is that necessary?

Interactive voice is the next most expensive in terms of energy requirements. I can send probably ten meaty emails with the same energy required for a single ten minute conversation with someone. And on Twitter, I can send a message that will be read by hundreds with about 10 seconds of effort. No way voice can compete with that, though it definitely has its place.

When I do have to talk to someone, I use Skype’s VoIP service to communicate through my computer, and I prefer their VoIP network for voice to anything else I use for this purpose. The voice quality is better, I can talk just about anywhere in the world for free, and I can combine talking with text and other electronic methods of communications. Voice is an important part of my use of Skype’s network, but it is not the primary reason Skype is so attractive to me.

Ironically, all these new digital communications methods are faulted for taking up too much of our lives. The reality is that they are much better at leveraging our time and energy, and this is the driver for their victory over voice. Workers may claim that smartphones and email are consuming their work lives. However, without email and other electronic communications, many workers would be much less valuable and therefore paid less. Few workers would trade in their Blackberry for reduced compensation.

© 2009, The Product Group LLC. All rights reserved.

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1. cyberdoyle says:

   October 12, 2009 at 7:44 am

   Great article, you are spot on.

   Anyone not engaged in this way is being left behind. If more mobile masts were deployed the coverage in the UK would be a lot better and more people would use the internet more. In the same way rural areas don’t have first gen copper broadband access they don’t have mobile coverage in the UK either.
   But, we can see the future.
   It just ain’t here for all of us yet.
   chris
2. Mike says:

   October 12, 2009 at 8:28 am

   Agree fully with the sentiment.

   But why oh why is all out regulation centred on preserving legacy voice services in their current form.

   The notion of creating a national data fabric has not even eneterd our lexicon. Ofcom favour another 4 years of call conveyance charges rather than sending a clear signal that the transfer of bits is the only valid measure.