Disagree two big providers Skype, and Vonage....I'll throw in a 3rd Net2phone, also, since when did they ever interoperate with anyone, at a primary level, let alone a codec level.
VoIP will work if the VoIP providers interconnect with each other, the end points can take care of the codec negotiation, I guess it adds overhead, but the more the merrier I think, and if its "free" the better it will be, rather than the likes of cisco locking all development down to one or the other, and hiking up prices.
From a commercial point of view, all consumers want awesome quality and cheap prices, the internet has given them this notion that everything should be a $/£10 per month. If you have that, and they want the hardware subsidised, then when u have paid for codecs inserted, the business model just does not work, unless you have volumes. Vonage spends approx $110 in acquiring a customer, and it is a loss leader for them, but how many companies including those on this list have a cash corpus of $200+ million...if they do my services are for hire :-). They may not care of the cost of a codec....but I need to
If a really good codec for low bandwidth hits the market it can only work if it is free...why? simply low bandwidth is currently deployed in places where internet penertration is low...due to policy or cost , and hence adding a further additonal cost onto the hardware, will not help it spread. So keep it free, and I know some of the guys on this list....and others like it, will make it all work together :-)
Just my $0.02
Iqbal
Kofi Obiri-Yeboah wrote:
the success or failure of VOIP is dependent on inter operability. While I agree that "free" is better than "pay", unfortunately, for now, one should deploy whatever codec is more popular. remember that the sdp protocol allows for codec negotiation.