Voice Communications Needs to Make Its ‘Presence’ Known on the Web
Why It’s Past Time for the Telephonics Industry to Embrace the Internet
When it comes to building a thriving and lasting industry, evolution has always been the key to survival. Staying still is a surefire path to extinction. And nothing in recent history has spurred more change across all industries than the Internet.
Take for instance television, which was initially resistant to changing its tried-and-true delivery methods to incorporate the Internet. It tried in vain to keep its customers reliant on cable boxes and satellite dishes in order to watch their favorite shows. As more and more customers began looking for ways to “cut the cord” and get their entertainment through various online offerings, the industry took notice and realized it needed to evolve in order to capture a new generation of online audiences. Suddenly, television wasn’t something that had to be watched on an actual television, and the industry began offering on-demand services, streaming services, apps and other offerings that require an Internet connection as opposed to a cable connection.
Similar things have happened across the board. You don’t need a physical CD (or cassette or vinyl album) to listen to your favorite song anymore; you can download it or stream it or create your own custom online radio station. Books used to take up a lot of space and for voracious readers and collectors were a heavy hassle when it came time to move houses. Now, you can keep your entire library on a device the size of your palm, you can download what you want to read without ever having to leave your favorite reading chair, and you can even decide to take a rest from reading and just listen to the audiobook. The ease and speed of emails replaced the cost and time of mailing physical letters and mail is no longer confined to your mailbox, you can get email anywhere. All these industries have realized that evolution is not an option, it is a requirement in the Digital Age, and have found new delivery systems for their products.
So why hasn’t the telephone industry evolved?
On the surface, it probably seems like it has. There are phones that come with all manner of bells and whistles that look shiny and new. Touch screens and video calls and voice commands all give the illusion that the industry is keeping up with the Digital Age. But the fact of the matter is, voice communication is still largely unchanged as a form of communication. Despite appearances, nearly all voice communication is carried out by what is called the public switch telephone network (PSTN) that consists of telephone lines, cellular networks, communications satellites, etc. To put this in perspective, this is the concept that was born back in the early days of the telephone where switchboard operators were responsible for directly linking two phones together through a single connective line. That’s right, the same framework that was used when Alexander Graham Bell still walked the Earth is still the industry-wide standard.
There has been some toe-dipping into internet-based delivery systems, primarily through Voice over IP (VoIP) which uses Internet Protocol networks as a connective link between voice-enabled devices. Without getting overly technical, PSTN transmits calls over a circuit-switched network, while VoIP sends digital information over a packet-switched network. It may seem like a minor distinction, but it actually opens up a whole world of potential innovations in voice communications.
Perhaps the biggest thing to note about VoIP is that it opens up the possibility to use WiFi to make calls. And with most people already paying for WiFi service and existing in areas with WiFi coverage 80 percent of the time, why pay twice for something when you don’t have to? Using VoIP, customers can supplement or even replace cellular service with the WiFi they already pay for, which has monumental transformative implications for the industry.
But beyond costs, there are many other possibilities when the telephone industry finally opens up to the Digital Age. Take, for instance, presence. It is a notion we are already familiar with when it comes to instant messaging, and to a lesser extent, text messaging. Essentially, presence is what happens when you open up your instant messaging service and you get a list of which of you contacts are available, which are busy, and which are not logged in. Or when you send a text and you see those three little dots that indicate the recipient is replying. Presence doesn’t exist for traditional voice communication yet, and it is largely because of the restrictions of the PSTN. For the most part, you’re flying blind when you go to call someone and don’t know if they are available to talk — unless you take a shortcut and send them an exploratory text beforehand.
With VoIP, the lines of communication are always open, there isn’t a circuit-switched network that only opens up a line when asked. This makes presence in voice calling not just a possibility but a no-brainer. And presence just scratches the surface of what innovations the industry could see by switching to this new delivery system.
The bottom line is that leveraging the Internet for voice communication is not just a possibility, it’s an inevitability. It is the next stop on the evolutionary trajectory of the Digital Age, and the voice industry either needs to get on board or languish on the wrong side of history.
