[*] CRTC on VoIP

[Bill Reid]

Ron Dallmeier wrote:
> In my opinion it is good only from the perspective that the ILECs cannot
> play favourites and charge different rates to the clients that have have a

...

> costs today are support and gateway to the PSTN. As VoIP grows in
> market-share and peering matures, the PSTN gateway costs will approach zero
> leaving only support.
> 
I agree with your points.

Currently it would appear that the only hitch in providing VoIP service is the 
911 issue. I see that a few xLECs in the States are offering to provide 911 
support to VoIP resellers. I have not see what they plan to charge but clearly 
if it is reasonable then the startup costs are very low.

> I think that if any government body wanted to promote competition, they
> should focus their efforts of creating an open peering exchange (ENUM) and
> encourage/mandate VoIP providers to use it.
> 
There should be strong market presuure to make this happen since the big savings 
come when calls do not transit the PSTN.

> recognition is where it will be at. Who would want to speak
> one-two-zero-four-five-five-five-one-two-three-four when you could say
> ron-at-fiber-dot-C-A or have person directories and simply ask for "ron" if
> you only know one person by that name.
> 

This should be possible either via the phone or the server. Sounds like a good 
application. Use a Web Page to enter your phone directory and then run some 
speech recognition software on a server. The beauty of this approach is that it 
would work on any phone you use. A number of people including myself have 
thought of doing this with Asterisk and Sphinx but the problem is that the 
recognition algorithms are not that good. I tested Sphinx 2 with the demo 
vocabulary/grammar and was able to get it to mostly work but the accuracy was 
not high enough.

-- Bill