CrunchGear

The future of telephony is here.

I wonder what the “traditional” land line companies are going to do. I’ve heard of them doing such underhanded techniques like blocking net neutrality and basically forcing their customers to start using their own proprietary VoIP services.

This is just one step away from the complete mainstream VoIP cellphone, one that will utilize any wireless network available and switch between networks seamlessly. In areas without network access, the phone will use its own internet service to send packets. Overall, this will make for some cheap cell phone deals. I can only see it being possible from a current VoIP provider and not a cell phone provider. It would be wonderful if Skype came out with one themselves.

Amit

Bell had its time to shine, time for the next generation to take over… I am with Amit… Skype “type” systems are the wave of the future until satellite receivers drop in price and offer true affordable global phone/net service for a fraction of the current price . We are ALMOST there :-)

Jon

My question is this: how does VoIP and the internet phone compete with the wireless phone of today? I know many people (at least in my age group 20 - 27) who simply opt out of having a landline phone or a wall jack phone at all and use their cell phone for everything. Sure internet phones are taking the step into the wireless market, but is it too late?

And there are a lot of questions about service. VoIP is awesome for the price, but I’d choose not to use a WiFi phone just because service can be so spotty with WiFi. I’d have no problem with using it at home where I set up my own wireless network, but walking down the street maybe not…

And finally, does anyone really think a startup company like Skype or Vonage, or any VoIP company can compete with the massive networks such as the likes of AT&T, the Bell/Verizon frankenstein, etc? Do the investors think this?

Investors most certainly do not think VoIP is competitive right now. Vonage stocks plummeted shortly after going public because of extremely high turnover rates.

Turnover is high for the reasons you mention, Jon, it’s a young industry, but is recently slowing as technology gets better.

The big question I have is whether wireless VoIP companies in the future will have a competitive edge over cell companies data plans as more and more local governments start offering city-wide WiFi for cheap. If I can connect to a wireless internet anywhere within city limits with my VoIP phone for cheaper than I pay my cell company, I might be inclined to make the switch.

As for right now, it’s an easy decision to stay with my cell company.

I think VoIP companies will do much stronger early on by convincing businesses to switch.

It may be famous in USA market but i can’t see as many options here in EUrope, so no worries!!!

Personally, I think this kind of technology is about 10 years too early. I appreciate the concepts that are coming about (such as this iPhone), but at the end of the day a lot needs to happen before I see mass adoption.

1) Wi-fi ubiquity. Remember how long it took for cell phones to catch on? My family had a cell phone back in the mid 80s, but we were one of the few carrying around the backpack it required. The city governments are _just_ starting to hop on the bandwagon of free wi-fi, which means in all likelyhood we’re looking at a 5 to 10 year gestation period before these devices really start to take off.

2) Ease of use. I’m sorry, but people are barely starting to figure out how to hop from one wi-fi network to another. You can’t tell me these devices “just work”. They need configuration and the like. With a telephone, be it a cell phone or a landline, they just work. And if they don’t work right out of the box, then people have someone come by to install it for them. If Linksys and other companies want to start offering phone-type services, they need to become more than just technology providers… they need to provide customer service as well. And if they don’t provide that, then the broadband providers need to be equipped to provide such services for devices like these.

3) Money. Let’s face it, while Skype has deep pockets, their pockets aren’t as deeps as the baby bells. And the baby bells run both the landline business AND the cellular business. If any of these type of devices are ever going to succeed… and if VoIP is ever going to succeed on a consumer level, the VoIP companies either need really deep pockets or they need to partner with the bells. Until I see that happening, then I have little faith in mass adoption of this technology.

4) Infrastructure. With all the services we’re asking our broadband connections to handle these days (and some of them quickly becoming critical services such as telephone service), we need to switch to IPV6. We need more bandwidth to play with, higher security, and greater availability of network nodes. It used to be that twelve years ago, a family had one computer. Now there are two to three computers per household and that’s no including your Tivo or other networked devices such as your telephone. No, in order for VoIP to compete with the infrastructure the bells have in place, we need to improve our infrastructure and delivery mechanism a little bit.

Good ideas, but 5 to 10 years too early, IMHO.

Kurt Collins:
I agree with your points about it being a little to early, but the ball has to start rolling somewhere.

On a related note, I believe that the 5 to 10 year estimate can be shortened significantly if the web 2.0 mentally spread outside of the web. Imagine symbiotic relationships between multiple companies, then the time period could be significantly lowered.

For example, if we added google (who wants to eventually provide free wifi), myspace (who I assume would like to expand markets onto the cell phone), skype (who dominate pc to pc calls), linksys or orange (who are doing the hardware), palm (whose organizers are losing popularity), and a media company in a collaborative effort to create a VoIP phone/organizer/web browser which is partly subsidized by ad revenue, then we would see exponential growth in this type of project.

Economically, each company would gain less profit from each individual sale because they are sharing it but the total growth and dominance in the market would pay for itself as well as solidifying their brand name.

I envision a day when computers and cell phones will be completely free. For example, there have been talks on Yahoo buying out Facebook for more than a billion dollars (9 million users). That puts the worth of each user at over a 100 dollars. There have also been talks of a 100 dollar laptop. Wouldn’t spending that billion on creating 10 million laptops and selling them for less than 100 pay for itself. It’s late, please find the holes in my logic.

Amit

Of the two devices, I can see the former (CIT400) making the transition jump into homes with less difficulty than the latter (WIP320). With many home users having broadband capable internet, a device that subtracts the middleman - in this case, the computer - can be effective in reducing the load on said middleman, freeing up those resources for other things.

Or people can be lazy and not buy the phone, but that’s not cool. XD

As for the ’skypephone’ cellular unit, it’s not as easy to find wi-fi spots to use if you’re not in those areas often, which kinda renders the phone useless. Don’t get me wrong - I like the direction that this is going in. I just don’t see it reaching its maximum potential for a few more years. :D

This takes me closer to dumping my $15/month Vonage bill. But I can tell you my voice quality on Vonage is better than Skype at home, so I’ll have to keep testing it until it’s at least equal in quality.

The other of course is the lack of inability to port my phone number :( of which I’ve had for 5 years now, that was ported from SBC to Vonage.

Also, for those that are wondering how you could use the wireless skype phones at places like hotels that require you to login thru a screen, check out this..

http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1122062241008&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper

I use this when I travel to create a wireless network in my hotel room for my other colleagues to connect to (only I have to pay). This is the only wireless router that I know of that will take one wireless signal (say hotel or t-mobile) and recreate your own wireless network for you to connect to.

great