"Not a week goes by without a regulatory body like the FCC or the CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) ruling on something, or vendors complaining," he says. "How are you supposed to make plans for a mission critical solution when the landscape is so unsettled?"
To make matters worse, there's no way to predict what the next regulatory issue will be. E-911 in VoIP wasn't an issue until someone died, but the FCC ruling has had the effect of forcing vendors and service providers back to the proverbial drawing board to work out how they're going to do it.
"I think the vendors thought 'if we don't mention it, no one will notice,'" Levy says. "The truth is that we don't know what will be regulated next, but something will come up. Whatever plans you make, plan to change them."
The Upgrade Cost: VoIP is not quite as simple as some vendors make it sound. Although, IP voice is data, it is not just data. Unlike traffic like e-mail and web pages, it is highly sensitive to network conditions and congestion. You can't hear a delayed packet in an e-mail but you sure can in a VoIP call. And the amount of traffic generated by VoIP can be staggering, so if your network can't handle the load -- and most it can't, says Levy -- your voice communications will barely work.
"You're taking an entirely new data type and dumping it onto your network," he says. "And your network is supposed to support that? This is something that vendors never talk about, but you have to upgrade your network to do this stuff."
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
