There’s little doubt that IP is our future and the PSTN is the past, but just how long the legacy voice network will hang around remains a matter of debate.

A panel of industry luminaries discussed the likely life expectancy of the PSTN, and related issues of the migration from POTS to IP-based voice and other services, today at the ITEXPO (News - Alert) West event in Austin, Texas.

Participants in “2018: The Death of the PSTN” keynote luncheon panel included Daniel Berninger of Cipher Software; Marc Matthews of Metaswitch Networks; Mitch Simcoe of GENBAND; Payam Maveddat of Taqua; and moderator Richard Shockey, who heads up the SIP Forum (News - Alert).

In response to Shockey’s question as to whether it’s time to phase out the PSTN, Berninger indicated that it is.

“Nobody mourns the demise of the iPhone 15 when we’re going to get iPhone 16,” Berninger said, noting that the important thing is not what goes away but what’s next.

Matthews of Metaswitch added that it’s time to stop investment in legacy networks and move the focus to application-based environments in which voice is just one app on the broadband network. He added that although we’re already well on our way to the IP transition, there are still vestiges of the legacy network that are hanging on for dear life. For example, said Matthews, AT&T (News - Alert) in some areas doesn’t have replacement cards or maintenance staff to service 25-year-old legacy switches (60 of them), some of which have cards melting in the chassis, yet it continues to keep such infrastructure in operation.

Simcoe of GENBAND (News - Alert) said he hopes it doesn’t take a major network failure to accelerate the carrier transition from TDM to IP.

Matthews added that IP has far more redundancy than does TDM, so if there is a geographic failure, service can be backed up to other areas, kind of like the power grid.

The move to IP also can potentially help network operators introduce new services to reduce customer churn and even get new customers and drive new revenues, said Simcoe of GENBAND. IP infrastructure is also preferable to TDM because the former switches can handle millions of customers, while TDM switches top out at 50,000.

But to push everybody to transition completely from TDM to IP, the FCC (News - Alert) needs to set a date certain for this transition, said Berninger, suggesting 2018.

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