March 23, 2001, 11:09 AM — Although voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has been bandied about for years already, it has yet to take off in a big way in Singapore. Apart from being able to make the occasional long-distance phone call over the Internet, business implementation of the technology has been less than spectacular.
According to research by International Data Corp. (IDC) late last year, 60 percent of companies in Singapore are not planning to bundle voice and data on their wide area networks (WANs) while an estimated 33 percent are considering doing so but at a later time.
"The public switch telephone network (PSTN) infrastructure in Singapore is very good which made companies reluctant to use a new technology," said Sandra Ng, vice president for communications and peripherals research, IDC Asia-Pacific. "There is a natural resistance among human beings to move away from what's comfortable."
The benefits, however, of moving towards IP telephony can be substantial. Even a casual survey of service providers reveal that long distance calling services using VoIP technology may have discounts of more than 50 percent off traditional PSTN rates.
In order to stay competitive, most service providers in Singapore are offering long distance dialling services using VoIP. Singapore Telecom (SingTel) and StarHub are touting similar international calling services called V019 and I-Call 018 respectively.
According to Lim Eng, SingTel's vice president of corporate products, VoIP-routed calls constitute about 20 percent of the company's total international voice traffic, and the importance of the technology is only expected to increase.
"IP is rapidly becoming the predominant protocol for communications networks due to its ubiquity and inherent flexibility," said Lim. "VoIP will certainly play a significant part in SingTel's strategy as it will reduce our cost of providing services if the technology improves to a stage when it can replace traditional switching technology."
And with the onset of telephone deregulation last year, even the newer Internet-based startups like Wherever.net and UGotACall are aiming to serve the IP segment of the market. More such offerings are expected to crop up, increasing the volume of IP traffic.
However, a move to VoIP portends more than just making cheap long distance calls.
Most voice calls are made via the PSTN using circuit-switched technology -- or in other words, the plain old telephone lines that we use to talk to each other every day -- while computer information tends to be transmitted over a separately maintained packet data network.
"In data networks, bandwidth is usually shared between different computing without voice," said James Lin, manager, MultiVoice business development, Asia-Pacific, Lucent Technologies. "VoIP is a technology that was introduced in the last decade to allow real time voice communications on packet networks that utilize the Internet Protocol (IP)."
Whether the IP-networks are the public Internet, private corporate intranets, or extranets, VoIP allows businesses to integrate voice into these platforms, saving on maintenance and overhead costs of ownership for telephony systems.
In addition, the basic VoIP architecture allows for applications that are not available from today's PSTN voice switching equipment.
For example, enterprise call centers can use voice over IP to voice-enable Web pages. Using voice-over-IP-enabled browsers and a "click-to-talk" feature, customers, road warriors and telecommuters can connect across Internet and intranet connections.
Integrated e-mail, voice mail storage and call records are also made possible using voice over IP. A calling party can leave voice mail that is stored on the called party's e-mail system. The called party can retrieve his voice mail and click on the text message to return the call or leave a voice mail reply.
Other applications include Internet fax, and multimedia collaboration.
Applications that launch a Web-initiated call can also create savings for enterprise customers.
For example, by downloading NetSpeak's plug-in, businesses can let customers anywhere in the world contact them at no charge using a click-to-talk feature.
These are compelling reasons why one would want to abandon the traditionally stable PSTN and move towards an IP infrastructure.
Gartner Group advises companies to make voice-over-IP technology a part of their strategic local area network (LAN) and WAN plans.
David Neil, the research organization's analyst, recommends that small companies or remote offices -- those with less than 100 end-user stations -- may want to consider tossing out their old key systems or other telephony systems for new VoIP gear.
