I think it has less to with our acceptance of low quality and more to do with the structural shake out of the industry since 2000.
In 1998 there were three large and a good number of small-medium GSM carriers along with four CDMA networks. The cost of spectrum spiraled up in 2000 - so much so that there was little if any capital for infrastructure build-out. With the consolidation that followed those left standing were two virtual monopolies (what happened to the 1983 decree?) with Sprint and T-Mobile barely hanging on. So in the end the "we" part of "our" could do nothing but accept whatever quality we were handed.
Skype may be the best – both the best of what? Without any real competition, it's the only game in town – especially for small business – and without competition, there's no incentive to improve.
That said I'm not sure what the disappointing wireless network quality in the US has to do with Skype being business grade. VoIP and wireless network technology have little to do with each other. Are you saying there's a connection between the so-so quality of VoIP/Skype and poor US GSM network quality? I agree at least that it's not gotten much better since 2000 but saying the quality of one is so bad it makes the other look good in comparison is not the way to judge either.
From my own experience I can't say skype is business grade, a lot of the times background noise spills over into the conversation, while thr quality of the sound really depends on the kind of hardware being used, there are still many kinks skype needs to straighten out before in can be seriously considered to be business grade. Additionally, people's behaviour and attitudes also need to change for these kind of tools to work in a business environment, in the sub-continent especially people need to be educated on the proper use before they're put into a particular situation.
Because what you are doing with speech-to-text is asynchronous voice communication, rather than realtime...a kind of advancement of where the market is going. (Sidetrack: I just saw an ad on Sunday Night Football for Droid that would do what the Star Trek universal translator did...you speak a phrase and it translates and speaks it in Spanish...presumably other languages!)
But yes, you could even have a "telephone conversation" by sending each other translated voice messages in text! It would be super efficient because telephone conversations are already really restricted in the range of sounds. And having two channels open for the duration of a call is also really inefficient, rather than one stateless http session that sends the text data to be transformed back to speech (for hands free).
jaballo - the whole use of realtime voice has really declined.
This is off-topic, but I've found that since I got my iPhone 5 a month or so ago I've been using the voice transcription feature to dictate text messages, tweets, and emails. It's a form of voice communications. I sometimes imagine that my recipient might be using text-to-voice to listen to the message.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Social media has been with us for a decade -- but employer policies and the law are anything but firm about the most appropriate usage of this powerful tool.
Businesses often struggle to decide which domain to use. When it comes to purchasing a domain name, you have plenty of extensions to choose from, ranging from .com and .net, to .me, and even .mobi. But which one should you pick?
I've been writing about how the next evolution of the Internet might just be an advertising revolution, and how corporate IT can stay involved as the enablers and providers of the technologies that make this possible.
In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE