Will virgin do VOIP soon?

[virginruinedntl]

Anyone know if virgin are planning to do VOIP in the future, using the cable broadband and a VOIP phone? The audio quality would be much better and it would save us paying line rental as a phone line wouldn't be needed.

I certainly would like this.

[BenMcr]

I doubt it. VoIP isn't yet reliable enough to be considered a full phone replacement

[techguy]

That's funny cos I could have sworn Sky (Easynet) and C&W LLU'd lines all use voip protocol for the voice traffic. Of course all the traffic is converted at the exchange to be carried over existing copper equipment all the way up to the customer. There's no reason the same can't be done on the catv coax. This is done in the USA. Though here, they had telephony pairs put in at the same time so don't really need voip over coax. They could though decide to migrate their current phone service to transmit and recieve voice traffic by voip if they wanted like Sky and C&W. Would probably save them cost long term . .but haven't they outsourced the telephony side of the cable network off to BT Wholesale for maintenance?? Think there was a press release about this some time ago.

---------- Post added at 23:26 ---------- Previous post was at 23:13 ----------

in fact they do plan to migrate their existing telephony to voip...

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterprise/145833/virgin-media-hands-bt-its-fixed-line-switching-network

[BenMcr]

Carrying the traffic over IP is very different than offering a VoIP product instead of a classic landline

[Ignitionnet]

Carrying the traffic over IP is very different than offering a VoIP product instead of a classic landline

Hmmm.

You may want to tell the millions of subscribers receiving their voice service via cable (without a twisted pair attached to it) and fibre optics that their VoIP services are unreliable.

VM are just sweating their telco network. They are still using legacy switches throughout instead of migrating to an IP network as BT have been. I guess they don't see the business case at this time.

This said there is no reason whatsoever why they cannot retire virtually all of the current telco network. They could do some extremely cool stuff if they did, some friends in Canada have caller ID flash up on their TV when a call comes in for example.

---------- Post added at 18:03 ---------- Previous post was at 18:02 ----------

[/COLOR]in fact they do plan to migrate their existing telephony to voip...

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterprise/145833/virgin-media-hands-bt-its-fixed-line-switching-network

That story is from 2007 and it's still not done as far as I'm aware.

[TonyHoyle]

Modern call centres are all VOIP - I expect when you call VM 'support' your call travels mostly over IP beyond the initial leg. It's been standard in business for years (much easier to run an all IP network than manage two separate networks).

I run it pretty much all the time.. mainly because it lets me do cool things like having it redirect for free to my mobile, and I have multiple numbers so if a business only has a premium rate support line, I only give them my premium rate number :p

[BenMcr]

Looks like I need to re-read up on VoIP. I thought there was a significant difference between consumer VoIP e.g. Vonage, and any IP telephony the networks used

[jb66]

I think its on the cards, the copper network in some areas is a joke, if only you can see the lengths that tech have to do to get a good pair in some areas!

It is no longer necessary to have a phone during a power cut as most folk have mobiles.

[Turkey Machine]

Looks like I need to re-read up on VoIP. I thought there was a significant difference between consumer VoIP e.g. Vonage, and any IP telephony the networks used

I work in the industry if you need any info / pointers. :)

BT are on the way to moving everybody from the TDM platform to IP. It makes it far easier to manage, everything can be put through one set of switches as opposed to two completely different incompatible switches, and segregated on packet level.

The tech VoIP companies use is SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), and is markedly different to pushing voice as IP on the back-end, which is what happens now.

[BenMcr]

The tech VoIP companies use is SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), and is markedly different to pushing voice as IP on the back-end, which is what happens now.That's what I thought.

Probably my own fault - I always class the term VoIP as the SIP stuff.