VoIP Commentary Archive
:: VoIP Commentary Archive ::
SMBs' fear of the unknown
By: By Steve Hilton
In the industry, we joke about small- and medium-sized businesses' inability to deal with technology issues almost as much as my kids joke about my inability...
Fixed voice providers: Surrender
By: By Ed Gubbins
T-Mobile's entry into the landline voice-over-IP business last week was the latest accelerant of the trend toward voice as an application owned predominantly...
Time to get ready
By: By Carol Wilson
Years ago, before the advent of cell phones, a friend of mine used a calling card to call home from a phone booth after her car broke down. When the next phone bill came, she discovered her one-minute emergency call cost more than a 30-minute Mother’s Day call to a far-distant state...
The Google factor
By: By Carol Wilson
There's a certain paranoia in the telecom industry when it comes to Google. At one point, there was a similar paranoia about Microsoft, but that has been displaced by a mutual reliance the software giant works closely with the telecom industry on multiple fronts, and if the two also sometimes compete, so it goes...
Ask Steve: IP communications and SMB adoption
By: By Steve Hilton, The Yankee Group
IP telephony and unified communications: two great tastes that taste great together. These topics are near and dear to our hearts as we enter 2008. IP communications and SMB adoption are our topics this month in Ask Steve...
The economics of SMB go-to-market strategy
By: By David Waite, Altman Vilandrie & Co.
Talk to almost any communications executive today and they will tell you that small and medium businesses (SMBs), or companies with fewer than 500 employees, are viewed as an increasingly important market segment...
Survival of the fittest -- Carriers need partners not vendors
By: By Robert W. Pullen, Tellabs
Providers need more today than just high-quality infrastructure. In today’s climate of “what have you done for me lately,” the litmus test for choosing an infrastructure vendor is not only equipment, but also services that deliver quantifiable benefits to the top and bottom lines...
Jeff Citron, here's your answer
By: By Danny Briere
I briefly met with Vonage at the Consumer Electronics Show, and I talked to the nice, smart people in your booth. They were demonstrating some good-looking equipment that could do neat new things, and I even gave them a few good ideas to take it a step further...
No tough times for telecom?
By: By Carol Wilson
It seems inevitable that the slowing U.S. economy will begin to spill over onto the sales of the voice, video, data and wireless bundles that telecom service providers are now peddling. Or it did to me. But that’s not necessarily the case, according to some of the industry analysts I polled for this column...
Read my mind
By: By Carol Wilson
Voice as an application is not exactly a new thought, but voice as part of the rapidly expanding social network fabric is something to which service providers need to pay close attention...
Hosted vs. managed
By: By David Yedwab
Before discussing the state of managed voice services, I must say that I am confused by the terms bandied about by vendors, providers and other learned industry commentators...
Both sides now
By: By Carol Wilson
As a journalist, I’m always supposed to be objective, but everyone knows that can sometimes be impossible. In the recent dispute between a group of Iowa telephone companies and industry giants such as AT&T and Qwest, however, it’s easy to stay objective because I can easily understand both points of view...
Who decides?
By: By Carol Wilson
Some days, it seems like the services of tomorrow can't break free of the rules of the past...
The patent problem
By: By Carol Wilson
The voice-over-IP industry appears to have a fairly serious legal problem on its hands regarding intellectual property...
Dark days at Vonage
By: By Carol Wilson
The permanent injunction Verizon won against Vonage comes at a time when VoIP has moved firmly into the mainstream. It's unlikely the legal issues between the two companies will derail VoIP's adoption, but it seems certain to seriously impact Vonage...
Izzy… you didn’t!
By: By Tim McElligott
This principal of wanting to fit in by being able to talk about what everyone else is talking about came up a few times at VON this week. And I think it will have a direct effect on the longevity and business case of this current craze of Internet TV...
Everything matures
By: By Dan O'Shea
I was moderating a panel on open source software this week at VON, and as the panelists were making references to Asterisk updates and open source community projects that were flying over my head, I started to wonder what the heck I was doing there...
The open network
By: By Kevin Fitchard
Skype has asked the FCC to open cellular networks to any device on the market, citing the Carterfone ruling of 1968 that created a market for home phones, answering machines and eventually the Internet modem...
You've VoIPed a long way, baby
By: By Carol Wilson
The growing voice-over-IP industry has improved to the point that it outranks landline phones both in customer satisfaction ratings and in overall audio quality...
Star power in Beantown
By: By Tim McElligott
VON, the Voice on the Net event, is produced by Jeff Pulver, chairman and founder of pulver.com and iconic figure for the new-age, disruptive success of voice over IP. ...
New-age failure
By: By Carol Wilson
The FCC last week decided to impose Universal Service Fund fees on voice-over-IP providers and raise current fees on wireless service ...
Viral about voice
By: By Janet Hall
With 100 million-plus registered Skype users, and the other Internet giants Google, Yahoo, Microsoft moving rapidly to establish themselves as communications providers, telcos are facing a complicated competitive landscape...
Is Google a threat?
By: By Neale Martin
In this continuing series on competitive challenges from non-traditional competitors, I'm taking the unusual perspective of evaluating threats based on habits...
SMBs more than small talk
By: by Craig M. Clausen
Voice communications will occur almost exclusively via IP in the very near future. But the pace of acceptance varies by market, with progress slowest in the niche that presents the greatest opportunity--small and medium-sized businesses, or SMBs....
Cities get smarter
By: By Carol Wilson
Wireless is rapidly becoming the access technology of choice for municipal networks...
