TechNO Expo

Keynote Presentation
Joe Hines, CEO, Voice & Data Networks, Edina

The adoption of technology is a fascinating process that plays out over and over in the marketplace. Despite Apple practically inventing personal computers, we saw the PC slaughter the Apple offering in the 1980s. We saw Windows outsell UNIX, PIC, OS-2, and many other operating systems over the years.

Most recently, a tug-of-war raged between high definition and Blu-ray DVD players, and Blu-ray won. It was widely assumed that people would buy one player or the other, and the “vote-with-dollars” method of adoption that chose VHS over Betamax would decide. Instead, the consumer decided not to vote. High definition DVD players sold slowly as movie studios chose a format. Consumers considered expensive hardware that might not play their movies. Finally, in January 2008, Warner Brothers decided to distribute their movies on Blu-ray. More than 70 percent of Hollywood studios followed suit, and the war seemingly ended. The manufacturers and vendors determined the outcome, and consumers effectively sat it out.

In a sense, this is what has happened in voice-over-Internet-protocol (VOIP) adoption; many end users took a wait-and-see approach. VOIP operates over data networks, eliminating the need for dedicated telephone lines. Just after Y2K, the industry-standard time-division multiplexing (TDM) private branch exchange (PBX) phone systems were being labeled dinosaurs. It wasn’t until five years later that IP telephones outsold traditional telephones. End users waited, had the discipline to let the case for VOIP prove itself out, and are now reaping the rewards.