Conferencing services often use the public switched phone network for audio and the Internet for delivery of other media elements, especially visuals. That might not stop being the case in the vast majority of cases until 2014 in the United States and other developed markets and as late as 2040 in developing markets, Ferris Research analyst said.

 

The reason, as you might guess, is the unpredictability of the public Internet as a medium for delivering robust audio in such settings.

 

In principle, unified delivery offers advantages for end users. There is no need for users to remember and dial phone numbers and no need to incur long distance or usage charges.

 

Today, though, voice transmission over public data network connections often is not quite good enough for the audio part of a conferencing session, Ferris Research analysts said.

 

VoIP technologies like Skype (News - Alert) convey voices much less well when several people are speaking. That is less a problem for one-to-one audio sessions but can be problematic for IP connections using the public Internet.

 

In turn, that means a less natural interaction as people must pay more attention to the impact of interruptions and latency.

 

The solution, for businesses, is not to rely on use of the public Internet. More and more businesses are buying wide area Ethernet services that use quality-enhancing techniques like MPLS that reduce latency, lost packets and other quality-of-service problems.

 

Some of those benefits will accrue to remote users on unmanaged access connections as well. Whether full benefits will be possible for consumer users might depend on the outcome of network neutrality discussions.

 

Will users be able to buy or use managed connections as businesses do? Some strong versions of network neutrality might take that option away.

 

It is a reasonable public policy goal to prevent anti-competitive business behavior. But real-time services require prioritization to maintain quality. One would hope we do not lose the latter when preserving the former.