There are four main categories of company that are providing services:
-
Traditional telcos with a significant proportion of their own infrastructure
-
Telcos who work mainly or wholly as indirect operators (their customers use carrier selection, carrier pre-selection or 2-stage call set up) and use leased lines for transmission
-
Internet Telephony Service Providers, who predominantly use the Public Internet and have little infrastructure under their own control
-
Internet Service Providers who are adding voice related service features
The motivation for the telco culture operators, a) and b), is to use IP to provide cost savings and enable them to catch up with some of the service developments of the other types of operator.
The motivation for the Internet culture operators, c) and d), is to capture the established public telephony service market and establish themselves as the service providers of the future
In practice many larger companies may appear under more then one or even all categories. For example, BT has its own ISP business (BTInternet) which is promoting Internet named telephony services between its users, and it also owns a significant shareholding in QUIP, which runs by-pass services. Many large telcos are currently backing all options because they are uncertain how the market will develop.
Figure 22 shows the relationship between three of the service categories that we define and the development routes being followed by the different players. These diagrams do not show multi-media services because they have not developed significantly yet. The terms “PC-PC” etc have been added but apply only with the current state of relationship to services.
Figure 23 shows the same basic diagram but with the degree of shading of the arrows indicating the progress achieved to date. On the left side the darkness indicates the proportion of such operators that use either the Internet or managed IP. On the right side, the darkness indicates the extent of service provision, showing instant messaging as the predominant application at present.
Figure 23: Progress to date 
The current situation is that:
-
The market for public telephony from a PC is growing and selling primarily on low prices for bypass traffic
-
Internet named telephony from PC to PC is starting as a free function provided by ISPs and portals. Usage is driven by both cost savings and functionality (mainly the presence feature).
-
Both the Internet and managed IP networks are being used for public telephony bypass services
-
Very few telcos have yet migrated onto managed IP networks
In the long term we predict that the bypass market for public telephony calls will disappear as prices drop below a sensitive level and as usage based payments are replaced by subscriptions.
The speed with which the services and markets will develop will be determined by:
-
The availability to users of appropriate terminals
-
The development of access systems for domestic and small business premises
-
The way in which equipment will be configured in the home in future.
We explore these aspects of the market development and their relationship to services in the following parts of this section. In a subsequent section we look in more detail at the network technology and its support of services, including the distinction between the use of Internet and managed IP networks.
4.3 Terminal types and availability
The type of terminal determines the services that can be supported.
The types of terminal are:
-
A traditional telephone with circuit switched (normally analogue) network access
-
A PC with an Internet browser and software to support voice communications and either a headset or a handset for the user. We expect that Microsoft will introduce Internet named telephony with some support for SIP in the next or next but one version of Windows. Handsets would use the USB interface if they include dialpads, or could use the sound card sockets if they do not.
-
A special Internet telephone, which is a special purpose device for supporting Internet telephony and public telephony over dial-up access to the Internet.
-
A stand-alone IP telephone with LAN or USB access.
The traditional telephone can support only public telephony, but the other three terminal types can support both public telephony and Internet named telephony.
The current situation is that:
-
Almost all households have at least one traditional telephone
-
We have not been able to find figures for the percentage of households with at least one PC but estimate that it is over 40% since in September 2000 some 32%18 of households had dial-up Internet access.
-
We expect that it may become common place for PCs to be sold with either an integral handset or a socket for plugging-in an analogue telephone. We think that the most likely solution is a handset with dialpad and a USB interface, with all functionality controlled by software loaded into the PC. Net2Phone has announced that it will introduce a USB telephone for use with PCs early in 2001 at a price of $55. We think that solution offers lower costs and more functionality than the provision of a socket for an analogue telephone.
-
We are aware of at least one special Internet phone designed for using the Internet over dial-up access19 but the price is high and the design complex so we do not think that it will achieve much market share.
-
The market for stand-alone IP telephones with LAN or USB interfaces is only just starting and is aimed at business use with proprietary interfaces (PBX replacement). We think that there will eventually be a large residential market for such telephones but only when there are new standard interfaces and network termination points, or a more standardised system for downloading software (Java applets) into these telephones. These telephones will be used in the future integrated home communication systems described in section 4.5.
Share with your friends: |
