The promise of deep cost savings has been around since the earliest days of VoIP, when it made the jump from technoweenie hobby to prime-time enterprise technology. "There was a lot of talk then, and even now, about how much money you could save," Herrell says. "But the reality is that the advantages of VoIP aren't in cost savings. What is gives you is new applications and future-proofing."
This is compounded by the belief that the cost of deploying VoIP rests primarily with the hardware. Admittedly, the technology can require a substantial capital investment, but that's only the start. Plugging voice into a network that isn't ready to support it is, at the end of the day, an expensive waste of time.
"The myth is that the highest cost of the network is the network itself," Herrell says. "The truth is that it's the upgrade, and the upgrade for VoIP is a massive issue. It's something that enterprises have to consider at the outset, but many don't."
And the technology itself isn't out-of-the-box easy, either. Herrell points out that enterprises sometime stumble into VoIP with the mistaken belief that all they need to do is deploy the systems and everything will be okay. Infonetics directing analyst Kevin Mitchell agrees. One of the biggest VoIP myths today is "that it's easy, plug and play," he says. There is "still lots of interop work, software tweaks that need to be done by vendors to get media server from vendor A to work with softswitch from vendor B and the app server from vendor B."
Indeed, interoperability is another issue often forgotten in the excitement around VoIP. "The myth is that VoIP is completely open, but the truth is that it's still a proprietary technology," Herrell says. "You buy into a total package."
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.
