5 years ago: 3Com CEO says voice and data to merge

21.06.99: 3Com president and CEO Eric Benhamou, says the convergence of voice and data networks is "the next big milestone for the whole industry".

He claims the change will make networks richer and more powerful than ever before - and will affect carriers, enterprises and consumers.

New applications running on these converged networks will bring cost savings, according to Benhamou, but it will be difficult for many networking companies to adapt and survive in the converged environment.

21.06.04: Benhamou turned out to be right that voice and data networks would merge. But it took a bit longer than expected.

Only recently are we seeing significant numbers of companies move to a converged model.

The obstacles to adoption were many, including poor quality for voice calls over data networks, high cost for the new systems (especially the phones themselves) and the lack of a standard to ensure inoperability between the various pieces of voice of IP systems.

But with costs coming down - and SIP emerging as the de facto standard - businesses are finally starting to switch to the technology en masse. Large companies are leading the way, with small and medium-sized enterprises lagging behind. Since the technology's ready, all it should take now is some education before it truly goes mainstream.