Saturday, March 27, 2004

Competition for Skype

It was bound to happen. The model is just too darn attractive. Other companies were going to enter the p2p VoIP business, it was just a matter of time.

I just finished talking with the founder of one such company about his company and product -- John Jarvis of LitFiber told me that they are just a few weeks away from a beta release of their new p2p VoIP product iTALK 2U.

John claims that the sound quality in their product is significantly better than what Skype can achieve due to a significantly better codec that his team has built from the ground up. Even more interesting is the way he is approaching the market though -- he has built his product to be H.323 compliant.

Compliance with VoIP standards means that users of his product should be able to connect to any other VoIP infrastructure that supports the standard. This is a terrific competitive advantage over Skype's current closed architecture approach and should really transform the game. With this product, any of the companies that have made VoIP investments will be able to leverage the p2p VoIP phenomenon using LitFiber's product.

I eagerly await the release of the download...

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