Not anymore! :-)

Whether you agree or disagree, the convergence of voice and data is here and the future. SIP is just one piece of the technology to support the convergence which ultimately provides users more feature rich applications/services. SIP provides an easier path to integration and, if designed properly, works just as well as TDM and can be configured for more fault tolerance. In regards to carrier costs, SIP provides an opportunity for more businesses to enter the market and provide competition which will drive the costs down. I agree that some carrier's cost models to provide SIP services has not been appealing but that is changing as a whole. One could argue that TDM services have been out of whack for many years as the infrastructure costs have easily been recovered along with no real investment into development of new services associated with TDM. Yes carrier want to protect their revenue as they should and they will get it figured out, but even today there are many options for SIP providers. Bottom line is TDM days are numbered and with the proper deployment of SIP, the same level of quality and even more features can be delivered to the end user. SIP can be quickly deployed; I can get a new SIP service provisioned in a matter of minutes on a relatively large scale. Business needs the ability to rapidly adjust their voice and data services, this will never be accomplished with TDM in any reasonable cost model.

Agreed! More organizations should see the call center as a customer loyalty center rather than as a cost center.