With just a little thought and research one can easily trace the evolution of the technology behind today’s VoIP telephony back to the earliest days of communications over wire – the telegraph. The dots and dashes that made up the Morse Code used in early telegraphy are directly analogous to the binary on-off that’s behind all things digital today, including VoIP. It’s simply a matter of the speed that the signal moves, and the way and how its interpreted.

So it’s with a deep sense of history that I read this week of the impending death of telegraphic communications.

Now many Americans, being very provincial, think the last telegram was sent, via Western Union, on Feb. 2, 2006, with other countries around the world following suit. But the world doesn’t revolve around the U.S.A. The truth is that telegraph service has continued to live on in India, with Indian government-run BSNL still delivering an estimated 5,000 telegrams per day. Now, that’s due to come to an end on July 14, BSNL has announced. Indeed the announcement is said to have precipitated a rush to the Indian telegraph office by people seeking to secure a piece of history.

And just as a matter of interest, it seems the first telegraph system was built by British colonialists in India, back in 1833, in the Calcutta area. The inventor was a surgeon named William O’Shaughnessy, and that was 11 years before the legendary event in which Samuel Morse wired “What hath god wrought?” from Washington D.C. to Baltimore in Morse code, an event that most Americans think marks the invention of telegraphy.

As to what has killed the Indian telegraph system, the answer is the cell phone. According to India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) there were 861.66 million mobile connections in India as of February – a number almost three times the size of the entire population of the United States! With such a mobile user base, it’s hardly a surprise to me that telegrams aren’t used that much any more. The result is that BSNL’s telegraph service has been running deep in the red.

And of course for written material, e-Mail can easily replace telegrams – if you have an Internet connection. While the percentage of businesses and households in India with broadband is still not a majority, it’s getting there fast. India has the fastest Internet traffic growth globally and is expected to have 348 million users by 2017, according to networking giant Cisco’s latest Visuals Networking Index (VNI) forecast (Phone.com offers Cisco VoIP hardware, including its analog terminal adapter (ATA) and a very attractive entry-level VoIP phone).

As for VoIP in India, it remains highly restricted by laws that protect traditional landline companies. But use of PCs to call to numbers outside of India is legal, and I would guess it’s only a matter of time before the Indian laws change and open a vast new market to the VoIP industry.

Still I will always remember the old days, when I would drop off my newspaper stories at a Western Union office in some remote place in the U.S., or perhaps at the post office in another country, to be sent via telegram back to the city room.

At least with the desktop your choice of operating system remains pretty clear: You get a Windows-based machine, or you pay somewhat more and you get an Apple. Every attempt to unseat those two over the years has failed. Not so in the world of the cell phone.

In this corner we have Apple and the new iOS 7. For now, Apple is the king of the heap, but remember not so long ago it was Blackberry that was the king – and these days Blackberry is desperately trying to make a comeback with some slick stuff released and more already “previewed.” More, the latest two generations of Android-based phones have been rated as roughly equal to – some say a tiny bit better, other a tiny bit worse – Apple’s best. And finally we have the Windows Phone, whose latest iteration, Windows Phone 8, is blazing hot. I know, because that’s what I have, and it looks like after a half dozen tries Microsoft has finally figured out a winning smart phone formula. Given all of that, Apple’s perch may indeed be precarious.

But, as good as Windows Phone 8 is, it still can’t begin to match the applications base that both Android and iOS have built up. And don’t forget the old saw in the PC world: He who has the most applications wins. Microsoft knows that, and its working like crazy to get an applications base built up for its phone software.

Now my wife’s thinking goes like this: A Windows Phone is more likely to integrate seamlessly with what’s on her Windows-based desktop. But an Android-based phone may synch best with her tablet, and from her Android tablet (and Windows Phone 7) experience she knows that there are more Android apps that she wants than there are for Windows Phone.

Oh, and price isn’t an issue: The Android and Windows phones she’s looking at cost roughly the same right now (Windows because of some big marketing concessions on the model of HTC phone I’m toting, Android because she’s looking at a Samsung that’s one generation back).

And comparing features doesn’t help much. From what I’ve seen, both are great, indeed all of the contenders have their strengths (and weaknesses). Windows Phone 8 does browse a slight bit faster (assuming you can get LTE, which I can) than the others. On the other hand, Microsoft recognizes that Android may well become the market leader, so it is quietly backing Android software to link to desktop Windows.

Ah, and Apple, in its latest technology previews, has more than hinted at integrating VoIP compatibility right into its operating system, its demonstrated it in public. But somehow I think VoIP is coming to every operating system, and it won’t be long before my cell phone, via its wireless data persona, is an extension of my Phone.com small business phone system. After all, my Windows laptop already is.

Traditional business telephony, a category that now (at least in my book) includes IP-based on-premises phone systems as well as more traditional PBXes, took it on the chin again in the first quarter of this year, according to a recently released report from research house Infonetics Research. In a press release touting their 1Q13 “Enterprise Unified Communications and Voice Equipment” report, Infonetics says that the global enterprise PBX market was down 9% from the last quarter of 2012, and down 10% from a year ago.

The market is still hefty in size, at $1.8 billion for the quarter, but what I’m hearing reminds me of the demise of the once-dominant massive mainframe computers of yore, the dinosaurs of the computer age.

Meanwhile, Infonetics also reports healthy demand, worldwide, for unified communications (UC), with UC revenues up 21% year over year.

So what do we make of this.

The way I read it, it’s telling me that business telephony is moving in two directions. For the small and medium-sized business world, it’s moving into a purely cloud-based solution, with virtual PBXes completely replacing traditional on-premises key systems on the lowest end, and small PBX switches as one moves slightly upscale. And of course that’s exactly where Phone.com is targeted.

The other direction, favored by large corporations, is to host their own networks, on which they combine voice, video and data for their corporate needs – unified communications, if you will. But even here, it’s important to remember that while the largest of corporations may be able to put offices everywhere on the globe, their networks can’t always reach those places. So even the big companies need cloud-based communications carriers, again such as Phone.com, to help tie those outlying offices into their fancy new unified communications schemes.

The money, some $485 million, came from the Connect America Fund – what used to be the Universal Service Fund in the days that the goal was simply to provide traditional analog phone service to every nook and cranny of the United States. The latest tranche is the last in Phase I of the fund. In Phase II, even more cash is on the line, with some $1.8 billion annually available to service providers to underwrite building high speed fixed and mobile broadband to unserved communities. Total FCC investment in expansion and support of rural fixed and mobile broadband and voice through the Connect America Fund is budgeted at $4.5 billion. The FCC also estimates that untold millions more will be invested by carriers from their own funds in the effort.

“Without broadband, consumers and small businesses are cut off from the $8 trillion global Internet economy, severely limiting opportunities for jobs and economic prosperity,” the FCC said in announcing its release of the funds. Full details of the latest FCC action, including a history of the program, can be found here.

What the FCC is doing can’t help but be a boon to companies such as Phone.com, which stand ready to provide VoIP services to small businesses and residential users in rural areas the minute they do get adequate broadband. The FCC estimates that market represents about 15 million people, which one suspects translates into millions of small businesses, creating a fertile new market opportunity for VoIP phone service providers.

Now $30 a month, (for six months only), would have gotten me cable-based broadband service, but the cable company added to that an unstated installation charge. And taking the charges out a year or more, the cable-based DOCSIS broadband would have cost a little more than VDSL from the phone company  – but maybe not depending on the upload and download speeds.

To make a long story short, I’ve decided for now to stay with VDSL, after an agent magically came up with a $10 a month loyalty discount, so my bill will only double starting this month.

But that agent then said “plus tax.”

“What tax?” I asked. The $20 was the total price I paid, and I was shocked when he said the new $40 was “plus tax.”

The tax is on the line on your bill that says taxes, he blithely replied. There’s Federal Tax and local taxes.

No such line on my bill, I replied. There is no Internet tax, I said.

Yes there is, he insisted. The computer says so.

Read my bill, I replied. Show me.

Finally, after talking to a supervisor, the customer service rep admitted that there really was no tax. But, he added, the phone company’s computers had automatically added tax to his quote, even though by the time I got the bill there wouldn’t be any tax.

So, it seems I’m facing incompetent computer programming along with very poorly trained customer service reps (gee, last month one rep couldn’t tell the difference between upload and download).

Now I try really hard in my blogs for Phone.com not to diss the competition, but why am I happy that I don’t get my phone service from these guys any more, although for now I don’t have a choice about the broadband over which my Phone.com service flows? 

But looking on the brighter side, every report and study shows that people are fleeing traditional phone service to both VoIP and wireless (or both). The means that inevitably, the traditional phone companies are going to have to spiff up their broadband act, to the benefit of we VoIP users.

Century Link had been charging me what I admit is a rock-bottom $20 a month for 12 Mb/s service, with a modest upload speed of less than 1 Mb/s. Suddenly, the company wants to more than double that, to $50 a month. Alternately, for another $10 a month, I can jump to 20 Mb/s a month service (which by my math is $720 a year).

But what’s a guy to do? The only competition at this point is Comcast. Now the cable company is offering me 20 Mb/s for just $30 a month for the first six months, jumping to $45 for another six, and then to $63 after that (in other words, $756 per year). Now obviously, counting on my fingers, that means I’d be paying Comcast $450 the first year, which sounds good except for the little asterisk that says “plus equipment, installation, and taxes.” And finding out how much that will be in advance is like pulling teeth from a duck.

I have a feeling that many of my readers are facing the same quandary, and from conversations with a lot of people, I find that they’re taking double, triple or even quadruple play packages because of what’s become a fairly outrageous price for those who buy just one service from one of these giant companies. Indeed large corporations, which buy enough bandwidth to dictate their own terms, don’t face that kind of pressure, but small businesses and residential users certainly do.

Now I should explain that I have no real interest in paying for TV shows, so out go the deals that include cable or satellite TV. (It’s not that I’m anti-TV. I have a home theatre, get dozens of digital channels over the air, have lots of Blue Ray and DVD discs (and even some old VHS tapes plus a player), and watch stuff over the Internet regularly from several different sources.)

And I have no interest in a landline telephone. Gosh, that’s why I use Phone.com! So there goes that bundle opportunity. And although the competing broadband providers would love to see me sign up for their VoIP services, the simple fact is that, for the price, Phone.com offers far more features and flexibility for a small- to medium-size user at a far more attractive price.

As for throwing in a cell phone, I simply don’t use the right mobile carrier for such a bundle here in Denver (and I do have one of the latest 4G LTE phones, by the way).

So there go all the discount bundles.

Ah, what to do … if anyone has a suggestion, please send it my way …

Please don’t call me cheap … there’s also car rental to consider. And of course, there’s the cost of a nice dinner at a nice restaurant, although of course I’ll probably spend most of that on dinner with the wife.

But there isn’t the cost of an hour or more on the phone … something that once upon a time would have cost even more than the flowers. Indeed in the distant past it would have rivaled the cost of the airfare. Nowadays, of course, there is no additional cost for the long distance call, at least not for subscribers to Phone.com and many other VoIP providers. (If you’re still paying for long distance by the minute, shame on you.)

Come to think of it … my mother uses the Internet, even though she’s in her 90s. And her phone is carried over a VoIP service. But for lots of other folks … bet your mother and father still have traditional phone service.

So how’s this for a Mother’s Day present that will last far longer than flowers. If your parents have DSL or Cable Internet, but still use dial-up phone service, get them VoIP. With a company such as Phone.com, with the first month free, the total cost for a quarter of a year will be less than I just paid FTD for the flowers.

And of course after that the savings will keep piling up, especially if Mom (and Dad) call you more often now, since it won’t cost anything extra no matter where you are in the United States (or even overseas in a long list of countries, if Phone.com is your carrier).

And with that he managed to prove that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. He just couldn’t resist accessing the ATA, but he hasn’t quite learned enough yet (he’s in the middle of the course) to solve every network-related problem, even those he’s created himself.

Put another way, his phone doesn’t work any more.

For the tekkies among us: He accessed the ATA over the network and started playing around with some of the settings, in part to see how they work. The most critical one turned out to be the ATA’s IP address on the local area network. For various reasons, he decided to give all the devices on his network static IP addresses. He found the place on the ATA to set a static IP, even changed the setting to static IP, but forgot to enter the address before he pushed ‘enter.’ Thus, the network can’t find the ATA so he can’t get back into the ATA to restore the settings and, of course, he has no home phone service.

Oops.

To go into more detail, I have what qualifies as a small office phone system, but my “office” extends to family members, some of whom live overseas, and includes virtual numbers, plus cell phones and laptops set up as extensions. That includes my son, who gets his International phone service via his Phone.com extension.

To make a long story short … here comes Phone.com’s excellent customer service to the rescue.

In what was a matter of not very many minutes I had the answer to my son’s dilemma. Indeed, it turned out to be a very simple procedure to rescue his ATA. I won’t go into all the details, because I don’t want to tempt any of my readers into trying their own experiments and then begging for help, but in brief it involved connecting the ATA directly to a PC, rather than plugging it into a network router.

This story also illustrates that when choosing a VoIP carrier, the availability and quality of support is just as important as the monthly price. And from experience I know that Phone.com support is available 24×7 (and I know that’s real from having needed help at weird hours around midnight) by phone, live chat or by eMail.

With almost half of the states in the United States now on the non-regulation bandwagon, the reason I’m keen on writing about Colorado is because this is where I live. Were Colorado to attempt any state regulation of VoIP it would thus directly affect me and my Phone.com account.

It should be first understood that, as of this moment, Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) does not regulate VoIP, nor has it any proposals before it to do so. But of course that could always change in the future, but not if the bills now in the Colorado Legislature are passed into law.

The first hurdle has been passed, with unanimous approval by Colorado’s House of Representatives of a bill that prohibits the PUC from setting any new rules, service standards of pricing regulations for VoIP, or for that matter any other service, which is carried over the Internet. The next step is approval by the state’s Senate, after which the governor has to sign it into law. No immediate roadblocks are known to exist to either happening.

The legislation “sends a message to the rest of the world that Colorado welcomes continued investment, new high-tech companies, and job growth from rapidly evolving Internet technologies,” state Democratic Representative Angela Williams, who co-sponsored the bill with Republican Representative Carole Murray.

As various states line up behind these sentiments, I think it is incumbent on me to point out that the issue is not VoIP regulation per se, but rather it’s what would happen if each of the 50 states had its own separate set of regulations. That could have a chilling effect on the VoIP industry, indeed could result in a few industry giants taking over from the highly innovative and competitive situation that exists today. That’s because of what would be a burdensome chore for a small company of complying with so many different regulatory regimes.

In other words, any regulation of VoIP needs to be at the federal level only, applicable to service no matter where in the country it occurs. I personally am particularly keen on the one issue of service standards – not regulations for VoIP companies, but rather regulations for Internet providers. As a small office/home office (SOHO) user of broadband and VoIP, I’m getting particularly tired of the phrase “up to” describing my broadband service. I’d be a lot happier if the FCC mandated that any broadband provider nationwide instead use the term “at least” when describing the speed they’re promising to sell me.

I’d also like the FCC to start dealing with the issue of nationwide revenue generation and distribution of funds for so-called “high cost” telephone service. Currently that comes from taxes on traditional phone service, but with VoIP rapidly displacing that service, the revenues are going down. In Colorado, for instance, there is a state fund that subsidizes rural landline phone service, but that’s going to decrease by $5 million annually as VoIP takes over, Colorado legislative researchers say. The only way out, it seems, is to increase the high cost phone service tax by about 10%, which no doubt will drive more users to VoIP, meaning up the tax again.

The solution … now why didn’t the FCC and Colorado government gurus think of this … is to stop providing high cost traditional phone service, and plow the money (while there is still some) into providing decent rural broadband, so those folks can benefit from VoIP.

Now don’t everyone rush out and think that it means anything the average VoIP user will notice, at least not yet.  But the stakes are big for the VoIP community as a whole, and if the bigwigs in Washington are convinced that the rules need to be changed it will, in my humble opinion (okay, I’m not so humble) signal both another nail in the coffin for plain old telephone service (POTS) and both decrease the cost and increase the reliability of VoIP.

What the FCC’s now mandated is a “a limited technical trial of direct access to numbers” by a cadre of VoIP providers. Just who those are is not relevant – they simply represent the entire industry. And what the trial does is allow them to go directly to the national number pool to assign phone numbers to VoIP subscribers (for this test the numbers will be from the mobile phone pool). That’s in contrast to current rules, where VoIP companies need to go to local incumbent carriers (i.e. AT&T, Verizon and Century Link, for the most part) to get the numbers they provide to VoIP users. Put another way, the three giants that dominate the industry right now can hold VoIP providers hostage, perhaps, and at the very least get a direct look at what level of business VoIP carriers are doing in their territories.

If that isn’t a competitive advantage, I don’t know what is./p>

The FCC trial also represents a potential end to the area code system as we know it, since VoIP is not physically dependent on where a phone wire terminates. As the FCC says in its announcement of the test: “The relationship between numbers and geography—taken for granted when numbers were first assigned to fixed wireline telephones—is evolving as consumers turn increasingly to mobile and nomadic services. We seek comment on these trends and associated Commission policies.”

I won’t go into all the niceties of the FCC action, which runs to well over 100 pages. It’s all there on the web for anyone interested, at https://www.fcc.gov/document/direct-access-numbering-nprm-order-and-noi.

And I’ll be watching over the coming months to see the outcome of all of this, and what it means to users of VoIP carriers such as Phone.com.