To make that switch, firms need to replace their old switchboards (called private-branch exchanges, or PBXs) and telephones, and Cisco is happily selling them new internet PBXs and internet handsets.Indeed, this opportunity is so promising that Mr Chambers considers it a future core business.
It is also likely to lead to higher bills for captive customers such as businesses with switchboards, which cannot do away with their landlines so easily.Even if Verizon and AT&T can overcome their "wireline problem", says Mr Moffett, it will not go away.
Tens of thousands of desperate young people, many with university degrees, jammed switchboards to apply before the scheme had even been officially launched.
This will surprise Britons fed up with busy switchboards for appointments.
These first electrical switchboards, introduced in Europe and the United States in the late 19th century, were used to control groups of resistance dimmers, which were permanently wired to circuits in the footlights or borderlights.
The business machines of the time used plugboards (something like telephone switchboards) to route data manually, and Aiken chose not to use them for the specification of instructions.
Field telephones and switchboards were soon developed, and those already in existence were improved.
Major telephone switchboards of much greater capacity were needed.
Workers were fixing the last of the three switchboards that they suspect as a possible cause of the problem and the utility was preparing a backup system in case the repairs didn't fix the issue, Tepco spokesman Masayuki Ono told reporters.
He was looking for a vintage barber's chair, to add to his eclectic collection of old telephone switchboards, petrol pumps and aeroplane propellers.
Later, the development of headset sound systems which allowed the stage manager to remotely communicate with the light-board operators allowed portable resistance switchboards to be placed in the cellar or other places with no view of the stage.
