Before the Dawn of IP Telephony - Part 26Avoiding the pitfall of material selection (spring 2002)
These contents translated a serialization article carried by ITPro IP telephony ONLINE published by Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. Jump to the original (Japanese).
Shinji Usuba
General Manager
eSound Venture Unit
Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd
Broadband IP telephony was finally on its way to dissemination. Market and development environments took on a drastic change, and the selection of materials increased rapidly.
Needless to say, cutting component costs was an important key for gaining market share and spreading IP telephony. The positive cycle of product cost reduction promoting such widespread deployment of broadband VoIP, and consequently contributing to the further reduction of cost was beginning the deployment of gateway for broadband providers into the market. Many exclusive parts were commercialized anticipating the expansion of the IP telephony market from major device vendors to startup ventures. Price competition for parts also picked up heat. VoIP exclusive LSIs with built-in CPU such as ARM or MIPS as the core were commercialized one after the other and the selection range of parts widened drastically for device developers.
When looking back, however, there were a number of pitfalls. The lesson I learned based on my experiences at the time are summarized into the three items below.
(1) Don't trust anything that is not working. The fact is important.
Ever since the beginning of 2002, anticipation for the growth of the VoIP market heightened in the industry and we were visited by many part vendors like mushrooms after a summer rain. Some of the VoIP exclusive parts proposed were superb in that they were low in price, rich in functions, and designed with scrupulous care. Specifications and costs were satisfactory and the product roadmaps contained many proposals that were appealing.
However, some just did not live up to their expectations. Even after deciding to use a particular product drawn by the appealing proposal, it would not be delivered on time. Or it would be delivered but would not operate as advertised. Or it would operate but would not output the needed performance. After months of such disappointments, there were times that we gave up and decided to use something else.
Although this can be said for both hardware and software, it is important that they actually "work." No matter how good the architecture or concept, there is the need to seriously reconsider those that are yet working. This simple fact of something working correctly is extremely important for commercialization of any new technologies.
(2) The product is controllable. Find a partner willing to disclose weaknesses
Even when meeting the device specifications and interface conditions, there is a possibility that problems will occur when operating in a real user environment. This is especially true for services of the unknown area such as IP telephony. There were products that passed the shipment judgment and released into the market with confidence but encountered unexpected problems.
Photo 1 : Testing of a fax designed for telecommunication carriers.
These types of problems will occur no matter how accurate the device specifications are defined. And how quickly these problems are handled is crucial for the success of telecommunication carriers' services. To support this, our role as a device vendor is to provide device technologies that are "controllable." In other words, they must be available for appropriate measures by finding out the cause when an unexpected event occurs.
However, developing products using only your company's technologies is extremely inefficient in terms of expanding product lineup. How do you make parts that are procured from the outside "controllable?"
As a result, part vendors that we still do business with are vendors that are willing to disclose the weaknesses and tendencies of their products. In other words, they are partners that together with OKI, aim for higher quality products by reinforcing their weaknesses. There is no way to reproduce an event that rarely occurs and to clarify the faulty location without the cooperation of both parties.
Doing business with part vendors that are not willing to provide immediate help unless hard evidence is thrown at them, do not last long. When creating services that use a new concept such as VoIP, the relationship of being open to one another and providing support by directly facing the facts is very important. And not just between device vendors and part vendors, I believe this is also true for the relationship between telecommunication carriers and device vendors.
(3) Use your company's original technologies for key elements, especially parts related to voice quality and signal processing
Photo 2 : Yoshihiro Ariyama, a specialist in fax and modem signals on IP networks
I believe this is the most important point. At that time, many products were expected to be released, and we examined the implementation of not only our own technologies but technologies of other companies as well. With the addition of requests from the Procurement Department, we examined many technologies of other companies. However, I came to the decision that there is one technology that we need on our own. It was the technology related to voice packet processing.
Unfortunately, a technology that meets all of the conditions required for narrowband and broadband, voice quality that is not dependent on signal attributes such as faxes and modems, simply did not exist. There were some technologies that were partially superior. However, they simply ignored other necessary functions. Although we had products using other companies' technologies to expand OKI's product lineup in around 2000, more and more parts had to be modified or recreated ourselves.
This summer marks the 10th year since the development of the first VoIP product. Integration of fixed telephones and cellular phones, and application of IP in telephone networks have become the trend of telecommunication carriers. And we were slowly starting to hear a demand for a stable, rich communication on IP networks. It was then that we decided to commercialize the advanced voice quality technology we have accumulated into a product called "eSound." I feel that this is the result of our commitment to develop our own technology.
In the next episode, I will introduce an example of development in 2002 after such lessons were learned. It is the development of a full indoor device for telecommunication carriers. It was another hot summer that I will never forget.
... To be continued
