Slashdotted Berninger Article

[Ben Teitelbaum <>]

http://www.gigaom.com/2004/09/the_voice_over_i.php

Quite good.  One amazing tidbit...

  One attempt by AT&T to improve voice quality in the early 90's
  illustrates the PSTN's handicap. Marketing studies indicated
  customers might prefer a low end (i.e. bass) audio boost. Sony
  implemented this with a "MegaBass" switch on their Walkman product
  line. AT&T wanted to do the same thing in hopes of competing with
  MCI and Sprint on voice quality rather than price. The consumer
  Vice-President at AT&T, Joseph Nacchio, pushed through an $800
  million project to get the job done. AT&T could not simply install a
  switch on telephones analogous to the Sony's solution. AT&T had to
  alter the signal processing incorporated in echo cancellers
  throughout the network. These network wide modifications produced
  irate customers not more customers. The higher sound levels caused
  operators distress and amplified existing network quality
  problems. A long period with lots of effort followed to unwind the
  TrueVoice implementation. Joseph Nacchio famously left to launch
  Qwest.

$800 million to extend POTS's 300-3300 Hz range to 100-3300 Hz (and to
normalize the gain on local and long distance calls)?!  Holy cow.

Sometimes we forget how grateful we should all be for the end-to-end
architecture of IP.

-- ben