Evolution of VOIP-Voice

First it was snail mail, then email, what next?

It is not too long ago that we used to correspond through snail mails. I still remember writing post cards and dropping them in the post boxes. Not any more, I can communicate with anyone using email. It has changed the dynamics of communication. I think (and this is again crystal ball gazing) that the next wave of communication revolution would be voice or more technically VOIP. Please note that I am focusing more on the enterprise VOIP segment here. I, obviously, don't mean that voice is not used for communication, but the written form (email and others) still rules.

Well, it is not too difficult to figure this out, if you understand the motivation behind communication. As human beings, communication is our inherent need and communication is incomplete without a feedback. Communication essentially has two legs, a message which goes from the sender to the receiver and a response which flows in the other direction. Delay in any leg can be frustrating for both the parties involved. The entire evolution in communication has been to make the delay as small as possible.

Let us look at the evolution of communication over the period of time. Initially we had people taking the messages then it were birds carrying them. Next we had the postal services and then we had the courier companies. Off late we have had email, IM and telephones. Notice how the communication loop closes almost instantly these days.

The cost of providing instant communication (read Voice based) earlier was high. Even though companies would have loved to interact with the customers, the costs involved for both the parties prevented that and hence they relied on other means of communication. Now, with the cost of voice communication dropping substantially (coz of VOIP) companies would readily adopt this means of communication to be closer to their customers. We already have Cisco, which is big in this area. Microsoft is planning to launch its Office Communication Server, Google's GrandCentral and Yahoo are also tinkering with their VOIP offering. So on one hand the bandwidth becoming cheaper and on the other hand we have (or would soon have) the complementary technology to take advantage of it. The aim of these big players is not to enable us to make cheap calls back home; they are all targeting the enterprise segment. VoIP can be really big in this area and it would impact all our lives in a much bigger way.

This will also have a trickle down effect on consumer VoIP. The entry of the big players will give the much required boost the VoIP industry. We can then expect more economies of scale, improvements in functionalities, etc. This phenomenon is already happening gradually. Lot of companies, Universities, etc. have adopted VoIP and are reaping the benefits. We will surely see more of it in times to come. The entry of the Google/Microsoft would be a trigger for a shakeout in VoIP.

We will surely witness lot of action in the immediate future.

Voice is here to stay and so is VoIP!!!

This article is written by our VoIP news editor Alok Saboo. Alok is pursuing his PhD in Marketing at the Pennsylvania State University.