Steve,
The best answer is that you're probably in line for a solution that can give you the best of both worlds, a hybrid application. TDM is not going to go away because it makes too much sense for the majority of users today. In house, digital sets, utilizing your existing voice cabling. Why abandon that investment? If you have multiple sites, VOIP can be a great way to tie them together for easy dialing access and to save toll charges. To me it's foolish to allow the remote sites to rely completely on VOIP because of the countless issues that can render it unusable, so I recommend building them to stand alone, but enhance it with VOIP. For remote workers, VOIP can be a great application, with analog lines or cell phones as a ready fail over solution. As I stated way back towards the beginning of this thread, we have to see where ALL new technology fits in with what we do and what our client is trying to accomplish. It's our job to determine what works and what doesn't and advise accordingly.
As for the telco infrastructure issues, now is a good time to start evaluating carriers to see who has the best service, reputation, etc. And if Verizon has crappy facilities in your area, get the PUC involved.
