Chris Barton: Dawning of the stupid network

This was never going to work.

"Just plug the phone into your router and you can start calling anywhere in the world at vastly reduced toll rates."

That was the gist of the letter and the technical instructions that came with the package.

Call me cynical, but after decades of trying out new technology, I just know it's never that simple.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I plugged the phone in and immediately had dial-tone. A miracle. Within seconds I was talking on the phone via a broadband internet connection.

Normally, calls go down a phone line to the local phone exchange and then traverse an elaborate network of switches to make a dedicated circuit to the connecting number.

Mine, however, was bouncing around the net as a digital "packets" of data that somehow emerged as digital sound on the normal phone network to the connecting number.

Sometimes, depending on who I rang, the call would remain on net as digital packets for its entire journey to a receiving digital phone.

Magic, really, and it gives a glimpse of how all phone calls will be done in the near future.

What I plugged in was a Budgetone Phone ($70) and the service I was using was Slingshot's iTalk (www.italk.co.nz).

At present it's only available to Slingshot broadband customers as a cheap second phone line ($9.95 a month) and cheap toll calls.

And they are cheap. National calls, for example, are 9c a minute anytime with a $1.75 two-hour cap, compared with Telecom, which charges between 14c and 45c a minute at peak times with a $2.75 to $5 two-hour cap, depending on your call plan.

Land to mobile calls are 40c a minute anytime, compared with Telecom, which charges 71c to 90c a minute at peak times, depending on your plan. International calls are similarly heavily discounted and calls to other iTalk phones here and in Australia are free.

In about a month the iTalk service will be available to all broadband customers - a move that's likely to signal a war with Telecom. And the call quality? In my case using Ihug's 256Kbit/s broadband via Wired Country the results were mixed.

Calls to local numbers and New Zealand mobiles mostly worked fine, although on one connection the recipient said it sounded like someone on a transistor radio.

The call to Prince Edward Island, Canada (12c a minute with a $3.25 two-hour cap) was acceptable but was a bit tinny and scratchy and rated as a 4 or 5 out of 10 at the Canadian end - although it was noted that they get similarly poor landline calls there at times too.

The next call to a mobile in Chamonix, France (41c a minute) wasn't too successful - partly because I caught my son on a gondola going up the mountain for a spot of snowboarding.

The odd thing was that I could hear him as clear as a bell but he could barely hear me.

Just to check out the difference, I rang on my Wired Country phone and the conversation was fine in both directions.

The interesting thing about voice quality on phones these days is that the variable quality of mobile phone calls has made people more accepting of less-than-ideal sonic conditions.

But the significant aspect about calls like this is that they represent the slow but steady advance of "the stupid network" - something big telcos like Telecom hate.

You can read more about this phenomenon in David Isenberg's seminal paper, The Rise of the Stupid Network (www.isen.com/papers/dawnstupid.html).

The basic premise is that instead of the complicated telco circuits of today, better, more efficient communication can be achieved through unadulterated bandwidth that provides simple connectivity and nothing more.

In other words, like the internet - a medium that just "delivers the bits, stupid".

That way, instead of paying more - for add-on services like voice mail and call forwarding - one simply connects an intelligent device like a computer, a router, a webcam or an iTalk Budgetone Phone to the net and gets all the services one needs, sometimes for free and always for vastly reduced costs.

Another example of this idea is found in the cheap voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calls one can get with SkypeOut (www.skype.com).

As the idea catches on - and slowly but surely it is - the big telcos will kick and scream and do anti-competitive things to stop the erosion of their revenue flows.

When iTalk begins to offer its phone service over other broadband services such as Xtra's, I reckon Telecom will do everything it can to sabotage the calls.

Let's hope it doesn't because from a consumer's point of view, iTalk means greater choice and cheaper calls. Viva stupidity.