VOIP vs POTS was: Re: [semi-OT] alternatives to FairPoint in Nashua?

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Mon Dec 7 23:21:56 EST 2009


On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 1:05 PM, Gerry Hull <gerry at telosity.com> wrote:
> Though this lowers my reliability, I still contend
> it's 59s because of backups to cell, etc.

  Er, if it's down, it's down.  That's what counts.  The fact that you
have alternatives don't mean it isn't down.

  You haven't achieved high availability, you just have a higher
tolerance for trouble.  And there's a lot to be said for that.  A lot
of scenarios don't *need* high availability.  If it works pretty good,
most of the time, that's enough.  Why pay for more if you don't need
it?  Smart management is largely about buying what you need and no
more.

  But if we had the kind of outages you describe where I work, and I
tried to tell my boss that it was okay because people have cell
phones, I'd be fired so fast my head would spin.

  A lot of it comes down to guarantees of service.  With VoIP over
ordinary Internet, you've got basically nothing.  If it works, great;
if not, too bad for you.  More expensive services have specific SLAs.
That's often what a business is looking for -- assurance, more than
technology.

  Again, it's all about the application.  Especially for a small
company -- most of which tend to be highly mobile -- landlines don't
make much sense at all.

-- Ben


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