HOPE 26 (2026): "To Kill the Telephone System's Ghost" (Download)

Phillip Hallam-Baker Saturday 1200 Crystal Ballroom: The telephone system hasn't existed for decades, but its ghost lives on. We still use telephone numbers, but the Strowger exchanges built with 1890s technology of relays went long ago and so have most of the systems built to replace them. What we are left with is a system that is no longer fit for purpose. As with SMTP email, the utility of the system has been lost to abuse (spam) long ago. It is time to replace it with something better. Replacing the telephone system appears to be a hopeless task, but what if we could replace all the forms of person-to-person network communication with a single infrastructure that has security built in?