When considering the question of whether to switch from a TDM-based network to an IP network, you must not forget to include the most important aspect of the telecommunications service. I mean … provisioning, billing platform software system, central help desk, and other systems that you may have forgotten to mention. Migration to IP impacts everything in this regard.

A key problem is that the legacy infrastructure of most phone companies, especially traditional ones, is tied to legacy systems that most predate the Internet, including packet-switched services.

Migrating to NGN or IP means also affecting the entire design of the new office conceived for provisioning and billing, as well as the CRM (Customer Relations Management) software. We are talking big money here and that could take 40% or more of OPEX and CAPEX.

As you can see, it is not just a matter of bits and bytes or hardware.

Migrating to IP also means impacting unions, and that’s not easy training, etc.

There are some major impediments for telcos to migrate from today’s mixed networks – TDM / IP Core – to an all-IP network, in addition to the technical flaws already noted in various trade magazines and forum discussions.

Retraining the huge workforce would be a major undertaking, if ever this were to happen. The huge sums that would have to be incurred would not be recovered in the foreseeable future and the ROI would be non-existent.

There is an inherent weakness in technologists like us. Every time we see a new technology emerge and spread, we think the end of the road has come for those currently in use, without examining the pros and cons. Tried, tested, and stabilized methods of getting things done are far more reliable and productive than nascent technologies or even established technologies that are adapted for applications they were never intended for in the first place.

IP and packet switching are asynchronous communications ideal for handling bursty traffic. They were never designed or intended for real-time communications such as voice, fax, video that require synchronous communications, and TDM fits admirably.

The concept of voice in packets (VoIP) was initially developed to communicate over the global IP network, the Internet, which had helped people solve their public data communication needs and connect globally across borders. There were deficiencies in quality, delays, etc. But this method of communication helped people to keep in touch with friends and family, at little or no cost. So while such failures could not meet the serious business or voice / video communications needs that had to be done over global TDM networks, VoIP did meet the needs of informal personal communications. Skype also facilitates free video calls over the Internet.

With this development, technologists got down to business to see if the same technique could be adopted for normal telephony. Despite the billions of dollars spent in this effort, the results have been far from satisfactory, as we have seen in this and a previous discussion thread comparing the quality of VoIP – PSTN.

When the TDM telephony business began to saturate (more than 5 billion in a population base of more than 7 billion), some manufacturers came together to spread the entire IP network with the technology at its current level, to create business for themselves, and they managed to convince some. phone company administrators to move in that direction. Hence the NGN initiative. However, now that testing at BT and AT&T has revealed the futility of this effort, I hope that all proponents of this initiative will put an end to unnecessary spending on this initiative. Instead, manufacturers should invest in TDM equipment R&D and generate business in this area. There is growth potential in this too, through replacements and upgrades, in addition to increased requirements. We went from Strowger to ESS and beyond. This is the line to follow, not the softswitches and related equipment required for all IP networks. This will not happen in the foreseeable future.

They must realize that no telco will discard functional and working equipment to move on to a disruptive technology that is an all-IP network. Manufacturers who think they can strain the arms of telecommunications administrations by not making TDM equipment available to service existing equipment and incremental expansions are looking for trouble and could be completely ruined. They would not do that and will continue to supply TDM equipment and spend money on improvements and R&D, to reduce costs, real estate requirements, etc. They must remember that TDM is here to stay for all serious real-time communications such as quality voice / fax / video.