The Telephone Technology Pendulum and AnyPhone Technologies

Arthur Schopenhauer a German Philosopher, wrote an often misstated quotation, “Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom”.  We can apply this quotation in general to technology and specifically to telephony.  Telephony technology swings between complacency and advancement.  In these exciting times, when telephone technologies are rapidly advancing, we are often faced with the pain of innovation.

This pain is partially caused by the instability of change. Many of us have moved the majority of our telephone use from the over 100 year old, stable and reliable, plain old telephone service (POTS) to mobile and VOIP communitations. This pain is also partially caused by the transition of telephony from a hardware driven industry to a software industry with all of the advantages and shortcomings of software systems. Software, unlike hardware is relatively easy to change. This ease of change indirectly leads to reduced testing and an increase in software failures, commonly called bugs. With software innovation in the telephony industry the bugs in the system have increased. So next time you are walking down the street and your cell phone drops a call, recognize that this might be caused by a poor signal, an ineffective network design, limited cell capacity or even a plain old software bug.

As an entrepreneur I am happy to accept the pain of change over the boredom of stagnation. The next evolution of telephony, returns telephone services to their roots, it moves them into the clouds. Traditionally most people used telephone services connected to a centralized telephone utility. As networks expanded and became more sophisticated additional capabilities were added to the centralized utility.  In 1977 Julius Marcus, VP of Networks and Communications at Digital Equipment Corporation coined the phrase “The Network is the System”.  This phrase, in various iterations, was later used by AT&T and Sun Microsystems.  With the development of Cloud Telephony, the network is the system.

Cloud Telephony provides hosted telephone services accessible from anywhere at any time.   However, many of the first Cloud Telephony services, such as hosted or virtual PBX solutions, still require dedicated specialized telephones.  This isn’t limited to hosted PBX solutions.  In the United States, most of the cell phone carriers require telephones specifically configured for their networks.   So while cloud or network based telephone service are expanding our communications horizons, they are not freeing us from device dependence.

At Ifbyphone we are taking Cloud Telephony to the next level with AnyPhone Technology. The concept is very simple. We believe you should be able to add telephone features and applications to your business without purchasing any new equipment and while using your existing telephones,  any telephone.

The Ifbyphone automated telephone technologies work with any phone with a traditional phone number.  This includes home phones on POTS lines, business phones, VOIP phones and mobile phones.  With AnyPhone technology you have no hardware to buy to add new features and applications for interacting with your customers.

Today,  Ifbyphone AnyPhone Technologies support a wide range of inbound, outbound and API based telephone solutions. Over the coming months we will release new and innovative applications that push the limits of traditional call center and PBX solutions.  And they all work on any phone.