What happened to VoIP?

October 19th, 2009 | By Antonie Geerts

When I first got introduced to Voice over IP it arrived in the form of an Asterisk PBX system back in the summer of 2005. Ploughing through the config files and trying to get my first BRI ISDN card to work was the difficult part but once you’re done with that the “real” fun could start. As I was getting in to it more and more really seeing a future in to the system made me invest in myself by getting the Digium Certificed Asterisk Certificated (DCAP) which I received in the beginning of 2008. So almost 2 years later where is Asterisk and its VoIP system now?

My company’s mailbox received sporadic mails in asking me for support on their Asterisk build or Trixbox system but the “boom” on VoIP has still not arrived to my disappointment. Would it be that this great technology could not cope with the pressure of mobile network companies and negative advertising from leading PBX brand systems like Alcatel and Cisco?

The best way to answer questions like this is by finding out how popular it was during the years. I am using Google Insights Search to find out this information and this is what happened.

Ah this explains already a bit more what happend to me. Since I learned about Asterisk in 2005 it was when VoIP was HOT. The tipping point was building up and keywords like: VoIP and Future where widely coined. Sadly enough this hype was kind short lived since in January 2006 the search for VoIP declined rapidly. So does this mean VoIP does not have a future anymore.

Lets try to figure this out as well by find out relations of VoIP by using Google Sets and Insight search.

http://labs.google.com/sets?hl=en&q1=VoIP&q2=Asterisk&q3=&q4=&q5=&btn=Small+Set+%2815+items+or+fewer%29

Google sets provided me with the following keywords: voip,asterisk,linux,pbx,sip,software,telephony,ser,opensource,ip,skype,phone,voice

So lets do some insight search with a couple of these

By compairing the various Opensource PBX systems and also the widely used VoIP Application called Skype we notice that although the Trixbox,FreePBX,Asterisk systems are not really widely used the SER system is.

So a conflict , on the one side we see a rapid decline in VoIP and Asterisk and on the other side we see a big rise in SER and Skype. So what are we doing wrong ?

Go out on grafton street and asking anyone about Asterisk or VoIP…The chance that they know what you are talking about is very slim ! So that is the problem with our graphs and results. We need to related the information to not what it really is but to what it really means. So lets do this “check” again but now with understandable terms.

So it looks like internet calling is really on its way out… But not completely because how many people have a land line these days ? Often the younger generation will just have there mobile and no landline phone at all. So

Well a little light at the end of the VoIP tunnel since we have a rising volume of Internet mobile calling and VoIP Mobile and GSM searches… And Skype ofcourse with its steady stream, but to be honest I would put my eggs in the basket that will offer free phone calls which will be most likely a google system that offers free mobile wifi on its android system and it will make its money by advertising on the mobiles once in a while and finding out the so called hotspots in mobile phone numbers. By the way the “hotspots in mobile phone numbers” is another artical all together !