Lasting Effects

Watching the maturation of technology from the petri-dish stage to broad commercial use can be confusing. Sometimes, the industry has the foresight and the ability to help guide this maturation in clear and measured movements, like a complex but controlled symphony. Perhaps more often, it happens in fits and starts-in sudden revolutionary events that force us to deal with change in reactionary ways that have a hit-and-miss success ratio.

Either way, there are recurring shifts and regressions, forward leaps and contemplative stalls. It is sometimes difficult to figure out exactly where the leverage lies-with the potential of technology or the reality of business.

The rising popularity of the Internet as a whole, and its effect on public telephone networks the last few years, has certainly fallen into the pattern of revolution. The Internet's transition from a tool of academia to a marketing format and now to a commercial enterprise may be perceptible to some. However, for most companies that do business on the Internet, the shift was sudden and startling, like a full orchestra stopping all at once-or starting in thunderous unity without warning.

Most telcos have been very sure they should have a role in this business but often unsure what that role should be. Some first reacted to a surge in the value of content by heading squarely in that direction, with a few even going as far as launching e-commerce ventures. When these efforts failed to rally, many telcos receded to a more natural position by honing their existing networks into more capacious Internet backbones.

From that point of view, the Internet's rapid maturation seems to have greatly affected the telecommunications industry, while the industry was unable to keep pace and help guide that maturation. Technology moved too fast to be placed in a frame of business reality.

Now, some would say that Internet protocol-based networking, and specifically IP telephony services, are having a similar effect on the telecom industry. The efficiencies of IP trafficking and the cost advantages of IP telephony have forced many carriers to rethink their future infrastructure plans. IP telephony quickly seems to be losing its one-time niche ambiguity as applications such as IP faxing and IP videoconferencing become global darlings.

And so, at least for a while, the industry has been in reactionary mode. Decisions have been made and announced concerning new IP-related infrastructure strategies, some faster than the carriers who made them could properly explain themselves. Also, new players jumped into the international wholesale IP telephony business, names no one heard of even as recent as 10 months ago.

However, just as IP-based services seemed to be maturing at a wild and uncontrollable pace, about to transcend novelty status and forever change the business of telecommunications, the leverage is shifting. Where once breathtaking technology dictated change, now the operating, management and service realities of the traditional telecom business are taking over.

Whether you've noticed or not, the business process is currently having more influence on the IP technology revolution than the other way around. Providers and proponents of IP telephony are being forced to admit that the billing model for IP telephony services must be usage-based, that broad adoption of IP-based services depends on interoperability standards (even multiple ones) and that high-quality service support is the gatekeeper of long-term success.

Suddenly, the IP revolution is moving a lot more slowly. The bad news may be that the infant IP telephony segment of this 100-something-year-old industry may lose some of its fast-break entrepreneurial flash and panache.

The good news, however, is that IP telephony services may end up being a much more realistic alternative to traditional telephony services than they would have without this business guidance.

That could be the end of the story-the old public network industry's dominance of fresh IP concepts-but it's not. In terms of pure technology implementation, the public network is being left with an indelible IP tattoo. The shifting of network intelligence toward users, as driven by IP and seen in the development of new edge switching vehicles, will give new telecom networks a recognizable, but much more evolved, look than traditional constructions. The leverage shifts again.