Disruptive technology example: Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP, business phone service - YouTube

Channel: Kent L枚fgren

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Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP, is a technology for the transmission of voice over the internet,
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and it is a perfect example of disruptive technology for a number of reasons.
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It has evolved over time, replaced an old technique for a lot of people, changed markets
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and fields, and led to important improvements. Disruptive technologies, or innovations, are
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processes where new, ground-breaking products or services are introduced on a much larger
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scale than before, replacing the old ways of doing things.
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The concept of disruptive technologies, or innovations, helps us understand how markets
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are transformed, for example when new business phone systems are introduced, or how other
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fields are affected, for example how of new technologies are used to support teaching
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and learning in schools and at universities. An example of a disruptive innovation is the
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personal computer, which replaced the typewriter. The first computers were expensive, but, over
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time, a sequence of improvements made them available on a much larger scale and thus
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accessible for more people. Eventually, the laptop replaced the stationary
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PC, and mobile phones have replaced stationary phones, and smartphones have replaced PCs,
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laptops, and ordinary mobile phones. Smartphones have also replaced other hand-held
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digital devices, such as cameras, MP3 players, calculators and GPS devices.
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Emails have replaced ordinary paper letters. In my field, higher education, we have seen
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online courses replace campus education. And there is a debate whether or not massive open
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online courses, MOOC, are replacing the ordinary, smaller online courses.
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All these disruptors all have one thing in common: they interfered with a product or
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a service so that something new became accessible to the masses.
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In other words, through a disruptive process, a larger part of the population got access
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to new and better technical solutions and innovative services.
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Sometimes, over your lifespan, you experienced disruptive technologies or innovations.
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VoIP was such an experience for me and for many others.
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VoIP was really introduced during the 1990s and available to the masses in the first decade
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of the 21th century, at least where I live in Sweden.
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In 2014, when my employer decided to change the business phone solution, and it was time
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to toss out my old work phone, I decided to capture the moment, as a memento of an era
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gone by. The old way of communicating via telephone
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was known as the public switched telephone network, PSTN, also called plain old telephone
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service, POTS. The calls were switched back and forth between
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electrical circuits, and, in a sense, there was always a nonstop, physical electronic
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connection between the caller and the person that answered the telephone call. You can
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picture it as an uninterrupted copper wire, with signals going back and forth in a continuous
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flow. This old technique is being replaced by internet
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Protocol, IP, telephony, commonly known as voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP.
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It is also referred to as Voice over Broadband (VoBB), or broadband telephony.
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Regardless of what it is called, this new and disruptive technique uses computer networks
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and the internet to work. The old way of communicating and the new technique
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are similar in one sense, though, because they use digitization of the analogue voice
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signals, however the new internet telephones are winning the battle.
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The difference is that internet telephony, from a technical point of view, is not a continuous
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electronic connection and signals are not sent and received in a continuous flow.
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Rather they, our voices, are cut into pieces of digital data and are sent as packets over
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the internet. A business firm, a university, or any other
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organisation can run its telephone system over their standard internet connection, even
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a simple broadband connection. In our daily lives, we use internet broadband
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for e-mail and for web surfing. VoIP is just another service running over the internet
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broadband. There are benefits of VoIP. There are usually
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no costs for calls between two VoIP phones, which makes long distance calls less of a
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budget burden. It is easy to move a VoIP phone to another
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room or a new geographical location. Simply unplug and move it, as long as you have access
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to the internet. With the old technology, you had to pay extra
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for moving or adding a phone, if it was at all possible to do it.
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VoIP calls can also be made in different ways, which makes it even more flexible.
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You can keep and use your old, traditional phone, together with adapters to hook into
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the internet and the VoIP systems. Or you can use special VoIP-phones that are
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made for using the VoIP systems. You can use software on an ordinary computer,
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to make your calls via your PC or Mac. You can even have a VoIP app on you mobile
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phone. You are not limited by the number of copper
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wires that run into your business office. You just need one internet connection and
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you are only limited by its capacity, i.e. the bandwidth.
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You do not need to pay for and install a new copper wire each time you add a phone to your
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office, as long as your internet connection can handle the calls.
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If you get problems with bad sound quality, you can easily change your so called codec,
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in your VoIP server, for better performance. For a small business, there should be no problems
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with performance but larger employers, such as corporations or universities, probably
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need to optimize their solutions. Another benefit is the fact that VoIP is fully
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compatible with how the internet is set up and operates, and this is great for business
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phone systems. VoIP works with existing applications such
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as e-mail, web surfing and customer databases. Your VoIP server can take messages, and you
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can also send instant messages via your VoIP server.
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This is the big benefit of VoIP: telephones and computers used to be more or less separated,
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but they now live in the same world, and it results in tons of benefits for firms, authorities,
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organisations and individuals. In my example, the hardware is my computer
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and my headphones, and the software is Microsofts Lync, which is a fairly common programme for
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business phone solutions. It is not the only way of using IP telephony,
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but this type of softphone is the business solution that my employer has chosen at the
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moment. A softphone is software that you install on
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your PC or Mac to enable your computer to act as a telephone.
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It is becoming increasingly more common that businesses are using VoIP systems. We are
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witnessing the end of an era, and that is why I made this video, as a memento.
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If you want to read more about disruptive innovations, you should check out Clayton
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Christensen锟絪 book and his web site. You can also check out Dennis Viehland excellent
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article, if you want to see how the concept of disruptive innovations may be applied to
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the educational field. OK, that is the end. Thank you very much for
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watching this video. Bye, bye.