In a Biannual VoIP Market Worth $21 Billion, Where's the Innovation?

The numbers from Infonetics Research certainly sounded impressive. A new report by the market research firm revealed that the global market for VoIP services reached $21 billion in the first half of 2009. That sheer volume of revenue made it seem as if VoIP had become the massively disruptive technology everyone said it was going to be. A closer look, however, reveals just the opposite. In fact, VoIP itself is not inherently disruptive. Rather, it's merely a technology that makes the creation of disruptive services possible for those with the vision and insight to use it that way.

Phone.com Introduces Hosted HD VoIP Service

HD (high-definition) voice is getting increasing attention from both users and providers of business VoIP services. It offers a number of advantages over standard voice calling, especially in business situations. It makes calls less fatiguing, and different accents easier to understand. Until now, though, smaller businesses have had trouble taking advantage of the technology. To fill the gap, Phone.com has just added HD voice capability to its hosted phone service for SMBs.

In Network Neutrality War, AT&T vs. Google Sounds Like Republicans vs. Democrats

So it's now official: network neutrality is about Republicans versus Democrats. Evidence of the parallel was plentiful leading up to the FCC's recent notice of proposed rulemaking, when many public statements on the subject sounded like partisan rhetoric. But AT&T's September 25 letter to the FCC attacking Google provided the most convincing proof: it amounted to a character assault worthy of a presidential campaign. And a subsequent op-ed piece in the Washington Examiner made clear, if it wasn't already, which sides the high-tech combatants were on.

New Ifbyphone Version Targets Advertising Firms

Ifbyphone has launched a new version of its hosted telephony platform. The platform is one of a growing array of hosted services offering sophisticated business telephony capabilities, including features such as call center and interactive voice response systems, for small to medium-size businesses. The new version is particularly convenient for users in the advertising business.

Internet Traffic Study Points to Future of VoIP Peering

A new study shows that Internet traffic these days mostly bypasses the top transit providers. Instead, it travels through direct connections between traffic generators. The same thing will increasingly happen with VoIP traffic – that is, it will travel directly between VoIP providers without touching the PSTN (public switched telephone network). That will bring significant benefits for users.

Seven Scale Enters Cloudvox in Cloud Telephony Race

Providing voice phone services is getting easier all the time. Developers need merely write a few lines of code in a familiar programming language and pay a few bucks a month for a phone number. The code, running in a Web or other application, tells a hosted service to do things like making, receiving or otherwise handling calls. The developer's company pays a few cents a minute for every call that the service handles for its customers. The availability of such hosted services moves telephony out of the realm of telecom specialists and into the hands of ordinary Web companies. The latest entry in the field is Cloudvox, offered by Seattle-based Seven Scale.

AT&T's, Verizon's Mobile VoIP Moves Reveal Political Concerns

The timing of the announcements by Verizon Wireless and AT&T was almost transparent. Both came just a couple of weeks after new FCC chairman Julius Genachowski's September 21 speech on network neutrality. In that speech, Genachowski stated, among other things, that neutrality rules should cover wireless communications. Even then, it was clear that mobile VoIP would be the most explosive issue in the network neutrality battle.

Vonage iPhone, BlackBerry Mobile VoIP Apps: Better Late Than Never?

More than eight years after signing up its first residential phone customer, Vonage is finally becoming a real VoIP company. Despite being the name most associated in the public mind with VoIP, Vonage actually has spent most of its time pretending to be a conventional phone company. It offered little that AT&T didn't, except a slightly lower price. Recently, however, it has belatedly begun adding other ways to use its service which take advantage of VoIP's unique capabilities. The latest additions are applications for iPhone and BlackBerry phones.

Cisco Tandberg Buy Raises Questions About SMB Video Conferencing

Big IP communication vendors have talked the SMB (small to medium-size business) talk for some time. Almost all have said at one time or another they want to bring big-company communication capabilities to small companies. Bringing video conferencing, formerly a high-end enterprise solution, to the low-end market is a perfect way to do so. Thus Cisco's announced acquisition of Tandberg would seem to be a case of walking the walk. Tandberg makes low-end video calling equipment costing a few thousands of dollars, in contrast to Cisco's telepresence systems going for hundreds of thousands. In theory, the move could make video conferencing a common tool SMB tool. But questions remain as to whether that will really happen.