I’ve been following and enjoying an interesting discussion on the future of VoIP: Is VoIP dead or alive?

Alec Saunders started the thread:

2008: The Year that VoIP died

It seems highly likely to me that at some point in the future we’ll all look back and say that 2008 was the year that the VoIP industry finally died.  With all due respect to my very good friends Jon Arnold, and Andy Abramson, it’s about time.

Voice over IP is just a transport and signalling technology. It’s plumbing.  It may come as a surprise to some of you to know that in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s there was a TCP/IP industry as well. TCP/IP is inarguably plumbing.  As the IP stack became common on all computing devices, TCP/IP went from being a differentiator to a commodity.

Jeff Pulver left a response:

VoIP is NOT Dead!

Today is December 31, 2008 and I find it real interesting some of my friends have declared 2008 as the year that VoIP died.

On the eve of 2009 the promise of VoIP is alive and well and living in the hearts of many people who believe in the future of innovation in communications. Ask many of my friends including: Vint Cert, Henry Sinnreich, Joe Rinde or Daniel Berninger and they would agree with me that one day the vision and the promise of end-to-end IP based communications WILL happen. The Internet communications revolution is STILL happening. In fact, we are living in an Internet Communications Continuum.
….
And when I refer to the Internet Communications Continuum, I am referring to how I envision the continued evolution of the IP Communications Industry. In my case, this continuum represents all forms of IP Communications, including: VoIP, Instant Messaging, Presence, IP Signaling, Internet TV, Unified Communications, Social Media and more

Meanwhile, Ken put another perspective: beyond the  dead or alive idea.

VoIP – Is it dead or alive? Or simply boring?

VoIP is not disruptive. It’s over ten years old. It isn’t innovative today. VoIP is a tried and true technology. It’s tested and proven. It’s been carrying massive volumes of voice calls for a long time now. It’s almost what I’d call a legacy technology at this point.

The failing of the unified communications industry segment has been that solution providers aren’t selling comprehensive integrated solutions yet. They’re still selling technology widgets. VoIP is a technology widget that is simply part of the established infrastructure. It’s not new. It’s not sexy. It’s not disruptive.

VoIP is neither alive nor dead. It’s like air or water. It simply is. It’s time to quit kicking that particular dead horse because nobody cares. Yesterday in another post, I likened Cisco to vanilla ice cream – boring.

My take? It’s so simple. I still like to use some VoIP-based applications to communicate with friends in my PC or cell-phone.  Since I can enjoy it with the reliable services and affordable prices (even free of charge beyond the normal network/GPRS charges), so I think I still need it. How about you?

Anyway, thanks for the great and insightful debates!