U-Verse IP-based voice is now available to AT&T (News - Alert) customers in Austin. The deployment provides some insight into how incumbent telcos will migrate to VoIP.

 

Verizon (News - Alert), for example, has the same issue as it rolls out FiOS service. Over a period of time, VoIP will be extended in stages. Even in areas where every customer is able to buy FiOS (News - Alert) services, Verizon early on supplied voice services to FiOS video and data customers using an existing Class 5 switch.

 

Then Verizon shifted voice services over to a softswitch able to operate in analog mode on the subscriber side of the network interface. Now Verizon is doing IP-to-analog conversion at the optical network terminal at the side of a residential customer's ONT. In that scenario, the equivalent of an analog terminal adapter is part of the ONT itself.

 

At some point, Verizon's roadmap also calls for moving Session Initiation Protocol services closer to the end points. That of course will ultimately require decisions of the sort businesses now make: keep analog phones with less functionality or buy new phones that take full advantage of IP to the device.

 

Still, the more probable scenario for the medium term is that users will have access to unified communications and messaging capabilities that integrate the mobile device and PCs, rather than requiring a change of phone equipment.

 

In fact, in the consumer environment, it arguably is more important to integrate features across devices than to change the devices. It arguably will be more important to users to be able to initiate calls on a mobile or a tethered phone and then hand off the sessions without dropping the calls, than to use many other enhanced features IP makes possible.

 

Still, the point is that VoIP adoption will be phased. Not until FiOS-based data and video are bought by at least half of the customer base will it start to make sense to transition all customers to the new technology. And that will apply only to customers served by the FiOS network. Some customers will not have FiOS for some time, if ever.

 

One way of looking at IP migration is to note the parallel to how IP was deployed in the rest of the network. IP began in the core and migrated out towards the edges.

 

So too consumer VoIP provided by former telcos will begin in the central office and gradually be extended into the trunking plant, to the network interface and then finally to the devices. In the meantime, the important thing is integrating IP features in ways that change the user experience, not necessarily the devices.

 

For the most part, convergence of services, not devices, will be the rule and the objective.