February 16, 2012

Political Campaign Calls May Create Shortage of VoIP Paths, Says SIP Trunking Group

Each presidential election provides a number of different twists and turns, but there is always one constant: hundreds of thousands of outbound political calls asking for voter support in November.

Thankfully for campaigners, the days of manually cranking out calls are long gone. Today's political campaigners record their message once (sometimes rather poorly) and let robocalling machines do the rest.

Unfortunately, a high volume of robocalling can often create a shortage of VoIP paths, an inevitability about which SipTrunks.org has started to warn people. The organization issued a release today indicating that the demand for SIP paths capable of handling the surge in robocall and dialer traffic is beginning to peak.

"Call centers and other companies making robocalls or generating dialer traffic need to be aware of the huge impact we believe the presidential race is going to have on the SIP termination market," Marc O’Wind, director of carrier relations at SipTrunks.org, noted in a statement. "When the demand surges and VoIP ports become scarce, I predict it will be very hard to get any service from a carrier one does not have an existing relation with."

"When capacity becomes an issue, who is going to get helped first?" he continued. "Existing customers and existing relationships, or some new company knocking on a carrier’s door for the first time?"

A sudden rush of robocalls can also result in a shortage of CNAM CallerID capable ANIs, particularly in the Washington D.C. area where most political call centers are located, says SipTrunks.org.

In other politics and technology news, Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill has begun her push to throw out our current voting system that relies on paper ballots and replacing it with one that relies more on new age technology.

"It’s a very creaky system frankly and there are lots of questions about if standards are uniformly enforced across all precincts," she told a crowd at Greenwich Town Hall earlier this month. "It’s a concern we all share."

She believes that investing in a next-gen election infrastructure that will improve accuracy and eventually cut lofty election costs.

Click here for more on that story.

Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Rich Steeves