VoIP

EarthLink Endorses SIP, Again

Perhaps the VoIP protocol wars aren't over yet, but one major ISP made its protocol choice very clear with a new product announcement earlier this week.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 7, 2004]

On September 16, 2004, EarthLink fired a salvo in its pro-SIP campaign with the release to the open source community of proof of concept code called SIPshare. Although the site stated at the bottom of the page that this was not a product ready for market, that statement has since been highlighted with the addition of the following italicized text at the top of the page:

(SIPshare is not a supported EarthLink product. Please see the Disclaimer below).

The page introducing this piece of code got a lot of attention because of the manifesto that accompanied it. The manifesto echoed the call of David Isenberg several decades ago for a "stupid network" to replace the over-engineered PSTN. EarthLink's manifesto says in part:

EarthLink believes an open Internet is a good Internet. An open Internet means users have full end-to-end connectivity to say to each other whatever it is they say, be that voice, video, or other data exchanges, without the help of mediating servers in the middle whenever possible. We believe that if peer-to-peer flourishes, the Internet flourishes. SIPshare helps spread the word that SIP is more than a powerful voice over IP enabler—much more. SIP is a protocol that enables peer-to-peer in a standards-based way.

Isenberg and EarthLink are both warning about a network that is controlled by a single corporation or proprietary standard. Non facilities-based ISPs, of which EarthLink may be the world's largest, work with other companies and have a vested interest in open systems. They compete with the incumbent phone companies that, across the globe, are often government entities.

Free calling
On Tuesday, October 5, 2004, EarthLink fired another salvo in its pro-SIP campaign with the release of a product to its subscribers, EarthLink Free Online Calling.

Mark Griffith, EarthLink director of product marketing, said that this is merely one component of EarthLink's VoIP offering, and not the focus. "We believe this service augments our EarthLink Unlimited Voice service. It allows user to try VoIP for free before making a move that may be scary to them."

EarthLink resells Vonage service under the Unlimited Voice brand name.

Griffith points out that although regulation and economics make it impossible to offer free calls over the PSTN, that cannot prevent EarthLink and other ISPs from offering free on-net calls. "Online calling is the future, and some day more calls will be made directly over the broadband network (which we recommend over dialup only because the necessary QoS is more likely to be there). Will it happen in the next 10 or 20 years? Who knows?"

He says this product is just the beginning. "It's the first step to a great product, a great customer experience. It's extensible and in the future we will be adding features."

—End