RSSEarthLink Runs VoIP Over Phone Lines
By Ed Oswald | Published February 1, 2006, 2:39 PM
The VoIP market is one of the fastest growing Internet industries. While it only had less than two percent penetration in 2004, research firm IDC predicts that number will rise to 22.1 percent by 2008. Furthermore, JupiterResearch projects that as many as 20 million US households will subscribe to a VoIP service.
However, there is one issue that plagues the technology: bandwidth. By nature, VoIP both transmits and receives a large amount of data that leaves little wiggle room for other services. If the VoIP data stream does not have enough bandwidth, it can result in a noticeable quality degradation.
Internet service provider EarthLink hopes to change that with its latest offering. Instead of using a ATA box like traditional VoIP companies such as Vonage, EarthLink's service will plug directly into the subscribers traditional phone lines.
"They will experience their phone service in the same way they do from Verizon, SBC, or other traditional phone services," EarthLink's Director of Voice Services Jim Bagnato told BetaNews in an interview. The service launched in San Francisco, Dallas and Seattle last month.
Where EarthLink's service differs is at the phone company's central office. Until the phone call reaches that point, it acts as a POTS, or "plain old telephone service." After that, it is routed through equipment provided by partner Covad.
The call then traverses the Internet through Covad's network before it is passed off to EarthLink's. Bagnato said this is to ensure quality. "We have a lot of control over where the packets going," he said. Thus, the voice signal is free of some of the issues of ATA-based VoIP, such as network traffic and congestion problems.
Also, "you'll still have voice service if the power goes out," Bagnato added. "The voice signal is completely separate from the data signal," which means it's independent from power issues since it runs through traditional phone lines.
EathLink's offering takes advantage of the UNE-L regulation, put into place as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that mandates that owners of the telephone lines, or ILECs, must open them up to allow competition. EarthLink says that the telephone companies do not want to offer this service, as it would eliminate revenue from their existing phone and DSL services.
Additionally, VoIP carriers like Vonage and Packet 8 are unable to offer a bundled service with data, which EarthLink will do. Essentially, the ISP would become the customer's phone and ISP provider, the company explained. It expects to be the only provider offering this type of service for quite some time.
However, since EarthLink's service is inherently VoIP, the customer would still benefit from Web-based access and other features that traditional VoIP providers offer their customers.
The DSL offering will use DSL 2+ for data, which would allow for higher data speeds, as well as additional coverage at a further distance from the central office than was possible with previous incarnations of the DSL technology.
EarthLink's "Unlimited Premium" service would be the beneficiary of this, offering 8 MBps downstream speeds, Bagnato said. Along with unlimited calling and long distance, the package would retail for $69.95 USD per month.
While EarthLink will offer enhanced 911 service, Bagnato said it would not offer the choice of phone number like Vonage does. "Given the regulatory environment, and a concern for our customers, only local phone numbers will be allowed."
Bagnato admitted the policy was quite conservative for that of a VoIP provider, but said it was the easiest way at this time to ensure enhanced 911 calling would work properly. He did say, however, that the policy could change in the future.
EarthLink also says the service would support local number portability.
At this time, EarthLink has not developed a rollout plan, but it expects to do so by April of this year. Bagnato said additional localities would come online through the rest of 2006, but the rollout would take several years due to the amount of capital expenditure and other issues.
In any case, the company is excited about the new offering. "All he or she has to do is plug in their phones as they always have and benefit from the savings of VoIP and the industry-leading customer service of EarthLink," Bagnato said.
I think that this is a real product with a viable success proposition. There are some issues that are dealt with by keeping the call TDM (time division multiplexing - traditional phone tech) as opposed to VOIP at least until it hits the POP. Covad as the largest DSL provider in the country (a large percentage of the Earthlink/SBC/Verizon DSL is actually provided by Covad) and currently a hosted VOIP provider is in a great position to make this leap with Earthlink Their existing footprint is HUGE already and as this gains steam it will expand. As a Covad voip dealer I am frustrated with the support from Covad for my clients, I do hope that this move helps that. It will also hopefully lead to more competition for the Entrenched ILECs that currently have vast areas where they are essentially unchallenged in terms of providing dial tone over TDM.
Really all this is doing differently that today is changing the TDM to voip transition from CPE (on customer site) to the POP, but it makes the local loop (of whatever type) and it's bandwidth issues no longer a chokepoint for consumer level voip. This will make adoption in the SOHO and remote worker market increase drastically. I am curious to see if this will penetrate to the Covad branded hosted VOIP product as well. You lose the features of having a really nice IP phone at your desk, but it costs a great deal less.
I only wish I would have thought of this myself...
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I have had Earthlink for over 4 years. I have enjoyed the service. I would say I have 99.5% uptime, and I recieve immediate assistance when I call(I rarley have the need to call). If I could have ADSL2+ in my area of DFW, I would jump on it. I will keep supporting Earthlink if they keep taking chances with new technology.
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Most voice communications get routed over the internet anyways at some level or another. And besides, a VoIP line only takes up 20kbps of bandwidth, which is nothing when most people who want VoIP have 3mb to 8mb internet lines.
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Until you realize that most of those lines are asynchronous, and their upload rates are capped @ 25K/sec.
That leaves precious little for web-browsing, file transfers, pretty much anything that involves upstream overhead.
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Agreed!
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I've got 8mb down and 1.5mb up, no cap here o.0
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I'm confused...Didn't we get VoIP to get rid of the POTS lines?
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Yeah, but what if you can use standard POTS lines from your house to the telco, since they are in place and require no special equipment? The real advantage of VoIP is the pricing.
What EarthLink is doing is offering the same pricing advantage and advanced calling features you get with VoIP by plugging in a standard phone to your existing outlets. Of course, you need DSL, but it's still pretty damn cool, I think.
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Heh...I'm out. In order to get DSL in our area, you have to get POTS service.
Makes this pretty much pointless to me. Hopefully the rest of ya'll are a bit better off than I.
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That sounds like a really complicated setup to me, and it makes me wonder how much is actually saved when it's all done.
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This is a terrific value and definitely an easier choice to use than regular VoIP since you can use all your phone jacks, not simply just the one where the ATA adapter is located.
Hopefully this will roll out faster than indicated.
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Nice idea but not realistic-- if they have to wire everyone up. Even if they could lease lesser dsl lines already in place, don't count on it. Local telcos have been trying to get their cities wired for over a decade, and still haven't gotten to many areas. I think wimax is the ticket-- full trial of it at next Olympics and World Cups: can be 10-100 times Earthlink's announced bandwidth--a capacity which will soon be found inadequate to handle the uses that loom in the horizon.
Earthlink is really nothing more than a shell corporation. It's more a middleman than an ISP per se-- holds no equipment / infrastructure-- so it can't build anything by itself. It can only contract out others to do so and/or lease space. That entails higher costs and reliance on others. In effect this is announcement is nothing more than vaporware as far as being widespread-- at best it's a single city by single city process-- that dollars to doughnuts will likely not blanket entire individual cities, and will take years/decades to bring to fruition on a national or even just regional basis.
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