[AusNOG] M2 buy Primus

[Mark Newton]

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 02:43:08PM +1000, Paul Brooks wrote:

 > As for P2P SIP - no, not until we get universal ENUM or similar.
 > Your phone handset still wants to dial a phone number, not an IP
 > address - again, for many years to come.

Depends on your definition of "many".

My iPhone very rarely dials a phone number.  It dials names of
people and businesses that are indexed in various directory 
services (local address books, LDAP, recent calls lists, web)

The shift from "dialing phone numbers" to "dialing users" on
mobile phones happened quite quickly, and was linked to 
advances in the storage capacity of the phone (my first mobile
phone could store 16 fast-dial entries; If my iPhone's address
book has a limit, it's so large that I'll never know what it is)

No particular reason to believe that fixed-line phones won't
go the same way.  NBN is supposed to last for a century 
after all, right?

(my mother's DECT cordless stores 99 fast-dials; but its 
user interface is abysmal, and she never uses any of them.
"Fixed line" phones have a lot of catching up to do, but 
they'll either do it or get replaced)

Another trend that I wouldn't overlook is the possibility that
voice will move virtually entirely to mobile, leaving fixed
line for broadband-only.  The only thing stopping that from
happening is carrier billing models which make mobile more
expensive than fixed, and even that isn't sufficient to make
many users give-up on fixed phones at home.

  - mark