I hereby dedicate these ten commandment of Voice over IP, to be the moral guidelines of the telecommunicatinos industry, from this day henceforth, in the name of all that’s decent and reasonable. Heretofor let the fertile ground of Voice over IP services be blessed as long as its service providers adhere to these ten basic tenets.
10. Thou shalt honor the peering capablities of thy competitors. That means, if you can route a call to them without using the PSTN, thou shalt do it. And do it before the FCC mandates that you do it.
9. Thou shalt do thy very best to route calls to a 911 operator, but thou shalt not go out of business doing so. This means that you make take Verizon’s lead in taking their sweet time to roll out E911 capabilities and remind the FCC’s attorneys that many, may cell phones still don’t have E911 even though the FCC says they’re supposed to.
8. Thou shalt be open-minded. This means that you must not always use legacy technology (E911 and TDM-connected Public Safety Answering Points as one example, PRI call termination as another) to define the cost structure and service levels of your business. This also means, you should support the Macintosh and unbundle your services from your infrastructure (hello cable companies!).
7. Thou shalt not sell your VoIP service on price and price alone. Savvy consumers don’t buy on price. And take a hint from Steve Jobs: you want savvy consumers!
6. Thou shalt integrate voice applications with data applications, like the web, e-mail, instant messaging, and so forth.
5. Thou shalt avidly innovate to achieve your competitive edge. This way, you don’t have to lower prices.
4. Thou shalt not condemn thy voice application neighbors to second-rate quality of service on your network.
3. Thou shalt offer support for IAX protocol as soon as possible and stop whining about how their’s no RFC.
2. Thou shalt offer media encryption.
1. Thou shalt make VoIP services easy to use! Think iPod/iTunes homogeny. Think “I don’t want to reboot my ATA every fortnight.”
I also have a special commandment for ILECS and Cable operators (Comcast, I KNOW you read this blog):
Thou shalt not use underhanded or anti-competitive tricks to support your expensive infrastructure habit that you’ve built over that last 25 years.