Funny how often things run their course despite our feeble efforts at change.
The ISDN train is coming into the station for the last time, and soon, it’s final passengers will wonder why they ever bothered with the old thing, now that all those brand-new shiny conveyances are available.
Besides… getting a ticket on the ISDN train is expensive, not just for the passengers, but for the companies that run the thing. TelCos want to be done with it. Voice talent — being more agile — are ready NOW to jump to the next new thing. Producers/engineers/studios are the ones stuck in the mud.
I get it. They’re mighty busy, and ISDN is too reliable for them to change. But the smart ones will leave the train behind now, and get on something George Jetson would be riding, ’cause the momentum is there.
You can see from a long string of blogs I’ve written, what the next technology will be. It’ll be an internet protocol-based, broadband remote-recording solution. The one getting all the buzz right now is ipDtL (or “IppDittle”, as my friend Brian Amador calls it). Source Connect has had the corner on this side of the market for years, but has done little in the way of marketing. My personal favorite is SoundStreak. Then there are some also-rans: Skype for one, and ConnectionOpen for another.
Regardless, World-Voices Organization is deciding to take a big stand on this issue. We’re your voice over industry trade group that you should be joining, remember? Advocating, promoting, educating, and being the leader on issues-of-the-day is what we’re all about.
We say it’s time to dump ISDN.
The tide is in your favor if you are an independent free-lance voice actor living anywhere besides Los Angeles and New York. There are a heckuva lot of us, and we think we deserve a chance at some of those juicy pies that only ISDN talent could get heretofore. The advent of IP-based remote recording will be the biggest democratization of the voice-over marketplace in some time…and advances once more the evolution of this business due to the internet.
The next time you talk to your favorite studio, ask ’em what they’re going to do when ISDN dies. Press the point…even suggest your favorite alternative. Then show ’em the WoVO ISDN Manifesto I’m printing below. Last stop for the ISDN locomotive.
(this doc also avaible on the World-Voices Organization website)
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The Emancipation from ISDN Proclamation
January 1, 2014
By the Executive Board of World-Voices Organization.
A Proclamation.
Whereas, on the first day of January, in the year two thousand and fourteen, a proclamation and challenge was issued by the Executive Board of World-Voices Organization, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:
Whereas:
ISDN service is rapidly becoming obsolete.
Telecommunication companies are no longer installing or providing service in some regions.
Telecommunication companies are charging uniquely different rates for different regions, effectively making its use and access too costly to many voice talents.
ISDN is expensive to have and maintain for both voice talents and producers.
It limits producers to using voice talent only from certain regions or those that already have the technology infrastructure.
It’s an economic issue, it’s an issue of “fairness.”
Whereas:
There are many phenomenal talents in many places with poor or no ISDN access, limiting both them and producers from casting a wider spectrum of talents.
Leveling the field and making even more voices available to voice talent seekers are Internet-based studio-to-studio links that allow for superior quality audio at a far lower price. Source Connect, Sound Streak and ipDTL.
Tests show that these technologies are reliable and easy to use.
FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler has this vision:
“This is what I call the Fourth Network Revolution. History has shown that new networks catalyze innovation, investment, ideas and ingenuity. Their spillover effects can transform society — think of the creation of industrial organizations and the standardized time zones that followed in the wake of the railroad and telegraph.”
We at World-Voices Organization, the industry association of freelance voice talent, agree and feel it’s time that studios, producers, ad agencies and other seekers of voice talent make the move now and start accepting these services for remote recording work. Keep your ISDN until it is gone, but open the market to more talents. This benefits everyone.
Free the talent, plug into more choice. He with the most choices, wins.
http://www.fcc.gov/blog/ip-transition-starting-now
