'130-year-old mindset'

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), 3 June 2007

Kevin Clarke who writes for ICTWorld made it clear in a recent article that we shouldn’t focus on ‘saving pennies on phone calls’ but ‘look instead to the new business it can create.’ For him it’s about the break down of a ‘130-year-old mindset.’

Clarke wrote: ‘There are two problems with the IP telephony hype. First, IP telephony probably will not save you as much as you will end up spending on extra hardware to maintain call quality. The promise of cost savings is a red herring. But there is a bigger problem, which is that most people punting IP telephony completely miss the point about its real value. They are stuck in a 130-year-old mindset in which telephony begins and ends with the ability for two people to talk when they are apart. We have added some embellishments - voice mail, caller ID, call forwarding - but it is still all about talking’ (Focus on costs misses true value of IP telephony, Clarke, ICTWorld, 1 June 2007).

In other words, according to Clarke you should not focus on the cost savings IP telephony brings because ‘…IP telephony probably will not save you as much as you will end up spending on extra hardware to maintain call quality’.

On what should we focus then?

According to Clarke on ‘…the new business it can create’ (Focus on costs misses true value of IP telephony, Clarke, ICTWorld, 1 June 2007).

Clarke wrote: ‘The bigger point most people are missing is this: if voice becomes just another data stream, then we can mix it up and enrich it with other data streams. Once we do that - once we connect our phone systems to our financial and customer records - a world of opportunities opens up. We start being able to extract business from a system that was previously just part of the furniture’ (Focus on costs misses true value of IP telephony, Clarke, ICTWorld, 1 June 2007).

In other words, according to Clarke you should rather focus on the new business IP telephony can create than the cost savings that’s possible.

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