Tech
City Ponders Switching to VOIP
I am about to move in a few weeks, and I am thinking of leaving the good ole' Bell telephone service behind. Like more and more Torontonians, I am about to ditch the standard phone line for the VoIP technology - the Voice over IP protocol that turns your phone conversation into digital data and transmits it via an Internet connection. The main incentive for the switch is to slash your phone bill - VoIP services are typically considerably cheaper than your standard phone line, and often include many perks such as free call display, voice mail, and other features, as well as low long-distance calling rates.
Well, apparently it's not just us ordinary folks who are eager to embrace new money-saving technologies. The City of Toronto's 5-year $60-million contract with Bell Canada is coming to an end in 2008, and some of the councillors think it will be smart to not extend it into 2009 and 2010. The government management committee is considering the proposal to retender the contract and to save up to $1.7 mln a year by going digital with a VoIP phone company.
Granted, there are some potential problems with the proposed switch. For one, as the chair of the committee Gloria Lindsay Luby notes, such a big switch is a technically complicated task, and might not go over smoothly in the time left before the Bell contract expires. Also, as a relatively new technology, VoIP still has a number of glitches, and is still considered less reliable than the traditional phone systems that have been perfected for decades. However, the system has made huge improvements since its inception, and the City of Mississauga staff, who have been using it for the last five years, claim it has been a problem-free solution.
At the moment the committee is examining whether or not it would be wise to retender the contract, or at least to limit the length of the extension. I hope they give VoIP a go. Given Mississauga's positive experience, and the money-saving potential of the new system, I see no reasons not to try it. As a taxpayer, I believe that the City should very seriously consider every opportunity to make up the budget deficit without diving deeper and deeper into our pockets. And as a consumer, I am very happy to see healthy competition in a market that has traditionally been dominated by a monopolistic giant.
Photo: "Ring-A-Ling" by blogTO Flickr pooler ~EvidencE~
Discussion
11 Comments
Sort By Oldest First / Newest First
Subscribe
And another problem is that the VoIP connection greatly depends on the quality on the internet connection (and of course on its presence). If your internet connection goes down, so does VoIP. As of today, internet connection is still more likely to go down than the traditional phone line... but even as a lowly residential customer I forget the last time my internet connection broke, and I am sure that uptime and tech support is even better for large business customers.
It's also important to remember that VoIP doesn't always mean via the internet. IP is a generic networking protocol and does not have to be used as part of the internet. Some setups I've seen use VoIP internally and demarc locally to the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) at some centralized server. Their voice traffic never actually hits the internet.
10 years ago much of the skepticism about VoIP was warrented but any more. There are a lot of places relying on VoIP in a very real way and there's no reason that the City of Toronto can't save some money by doing the same.
monopolistic giant? there has been competition for over 20 years in the phone business.
It should be noted that these enterprise-grade VoIP solutions are a lot more rugged and reliable than your standard $20/mo. stuff.
None that I know of, so I cautiously wrote about savings "up to $1.7 million". Mississauga did save money however by switching to VoIP, so given that and Telus's statement, I think we can certainly expect savings. I figure if the committee has any doubts about it, they can request such analysis before retendering the contract.
<em>monopolistic giant? there has been competition for over 20 years in the phone business.</em>
In the last ten or so years there was plenty of competition between companies offering long-distance calling plans, but how many people had something other than Bell as their primary local landline?