[Serdev] So who/what is SER for, anyway?

[Jiri Kuthan]

At 00:15 26/01/2007, Dragos Vingarzan wrote:
>Jiri Kuthan wrote:
>>
>> what is NGN? -jiri
>>
>Rhetorical question... yet here's an answer :) - An abstract term, often
>employed by clueless marketing people to describe a fictive solution
>that would magically solve all problems of declining telcos in the face
>of disruptive services like p2p, VoIP, skype, google, etc. Was this what
>you wanted to hear ;-)?

yes :-)

>Well, now I wish I could go 6 years back and return the question: What
>is SIP? I am sure that your answer would've gone beyond VoIP. Come on,
>let me be idealistic. It didn't hurt you too much, right?

Actually, all modesty aside, I think my speculations were as little
futuristic as accurate. I've been a firm believer in the ISP world, and
it has been fascinating for me to expand the ISP/ASP concepts to
telephony. By then, I was more fascinated in the technology, today
I am having an equal share of respect to SIP's potential to push
telecommunications away from monopolistic world. 

>Come on guys, I am not the IMS advocate here. If you think it's bad and
>want to avoid it at all costs, fine with me.

Actually the abbreviation I questionned was "NGN" as it kind of appears
meaningless to me. Even it is what we have now today (with IP, skype,
google and what have you) and then it is not really very much NG, or it
is something very futuristic but I still haven't heard what content shall
be associated with it.

In terms of SIP, I think the business viewpoint is safest for giving 
forecast for its future adoption. I don't mean to be very futuristic
though, hopefuly the more accurate. Basically, the world is split in
incumbants and challengers. For challengers, SIP removes many investment
barriers (unthinkable before) and thus adoption is moving on quite
rapidly. Nevertheless, first because of challengers' pressure and 
secondly because of cost-saving nature of homogenous all-IP networks,
incumbants will be (and enlighted ones are) adopting it too. 

Just in case, that someone reads this is bad news for incumbants --
I didn't say that. I kind of maintain Darwinistic viewpoint that 
species can survive comfortably if they recognize timely climate change
and align to it. Perhaps the recognition is tedious, but alignment
itself with tons of cash is not difficult. Specifically, I think there
is lot of value in incumbant's retail capability and access ownership.


-jiri