IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings

The former company I worked for had a saying: “Don’t put all of your telecom eggs in one basket.” It was brilliant in its simplicity, but it captured a very complex and very real problem that businesses at the time faced. Fresh off the fallout of the fire in Illinois Bell’s Hinsdale switching center, companies realized that they were incredibly dependent on their telecommunications networks and that disruption to “the” network would have a catastrophic impact on their business. So companies like Teleport Communications Group (“TCG”) quickly capitalized on needs of large businesses for diversity and became “the other local phone company.” Smart businesses purchased services from both the incumbent Bell Company and TCG so that in the event either network experienced a service interruption, the other was available. This was known as “operational security.”

You would think that in the twenty years since Hinsdale operational security would be a fact of life. But as the reports of the interruption of major undersea cables serving Egypt, India and Gulf Arab countries shows, governments may not have fully grasped this. Many governments are content to continue to rely on their incumbent monopoly for their critical telecommunications needs, oblivious to the consequences of placing all of their telecom eggs in one basket until that basket gets knocked over as it did the other day.

To be fair, some of the carriers impacted by the cable cuts did have diverse routes available so service was not cut off completely. But the incidents highlight the need for governments to examine their interconnection policies from a national security and economic security perspective as much as from a telecommunications policy perspective. Security 101 teaches you that you should always have a backup. In the telecommunications world, multiple networks are most valuable the more they are interconnected. An interconnected “network of networks” is highly robust and able to withstand all but the most catastrophic events that impact a wide geography (e.g., tsunami, nuclear attack, etc.). The more interconnected networks are, the greater their robustness.

So when policy makers hear the arguments from incumbent carriers that they shouldn’t be forced to interconnect, or they should be able to charge “market” rates for interconnection, policy makers need to remind them that they are operating critical infrastructure and that interconnection is critical to national and economic security. When viewed in this light, interconnection is more than just a negotiation point between two large commercial enterprises.