VoIP and the Telecom Giants

I happened to sit next to an AT&T exec on the plane last night. He commented that "...two years ago I would tell customers that while VoIP is coming, it is still a long way off..." And what do you tell them now, I asked? "VoIP came."

It was interesting to speak with him about their VoIP experiments though. AT&T is still spending a lot of time worrying about priority packet routing and trying to focus on the highest quality possible on the voice connection. I observed that 8.5 million people find Skype acceptable (he had never heard of Skype) and that the wireless providers have trained us all to expect a little fuzziness on our voice connections... so won't businesses choose "good enough?"

He admitted that this scenario worried him...

Interesting VoIP statistics

These statistics were provided by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell in a speech that he gave today at the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners. You can download the entire speech from here.

• 2 percent of US firms currently use some form of IP telephony, and this number is expected to grow to 19 percent by 2007
  
• 73 percent of wire line service providers and 31 percent of wireless operators either have implemented, or are testing packet telephony in their networks
  
• 50% of Internet households are interested in Internet Voice as a way of reducing monthly long-distance charges
  
• Starbucks offers its customers 19,000 ways to have coffee (ok, not about VoIP but interesting nonetheless...)
  
• The US is 11th in the world in broadband development
  

More on Skype

Great post on Skype from Lance Tracey. I love the quote from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell:

"I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype. When the inventors of KaZaA are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic, and it’s free—it’s over. The world will change now inevitably.”

Still don't know what Skype is all about? Find out....