What Was the Most Significant Development in Communications Technology in the Last Decade?

“Fiber. Using light to pass traffic made the entire network infinitely scalable, fast and redundant. The speeds that can be brought to a customer multiplied exponentially. Faster speeds mean more applications, which in turn provides for more possibilities.”

— Geoffrey Shepstone, President, Telecom Brokerage Inc.

“The blossoming of graphical interfaces on the Internet. Remember the days of UNIX-based commands to do e-mail and sending/receiving files? Graphical UIs made the Internet accessible for billions of people.”

— Steve Hilton, Enterprise Research, Analysys Mason

“The most significant development in communications technology would be the rapid adoption of IP — not just in our business life, but throughout our entire life. Just look at the IP-enabled devices that exist today: cell phones, cameras, refrigerators, cars, etc. As you peel back the layers behind this ‘onion,’ you have MPLS, 4G and SIP which are all important contributors as well.”

— Brad Miehl, President & CEO, MicroCorp Inc.

“VoIP and SIP, without a doubt. It has changed the way we work, where we work and the entire pricing structure of the industry.”

— Bill Leutzinger, President, TelecomMedic

“Again, we have two contenders. One is fiber. While not as widespread as it will be soon, it has already opened up a huge new vista of services and possibilities with the enormous amount of data it can easily carry at an effective price structure.

The second is VoIP. I don't mean Vonage and the like, but the protocol itself. Voice became part of the WAN for multisite customers to communicate internally. This significantly increased bandwidth required for WANs and was definitely a catalyst for bigger, better and more affordable bandwidth. Additionally, as a protocol, it allowed regional CLECs to grow way beyond their previous borders. Data was always relatively easier to push a further distance as was even long-distance services. The local carrier switch was the biggest issue. You needed a heavy concentration of customers in a small geographic area to roll out a complete product. VoIP allowed carriers to reach so much further with their voice and integrated voice and data circuits by extending the reach of the local switch technology. Additionally, larger and more dynamic integrated services became possible.”

— Zachary Schechter, President, ZCS Enterprises

“SIP — it will change the landscape more than any one thing in the past as it will eliminate the carrier side and will become the transport of choice. It will allow companies to abandon the local long-distance billing as there will be no need for this service.

— Dale Stein, Co-founder, TAG National