Andy Oram on VOIP
Andy Oram has a pretty nice overview of VOIP, reported from the Fall 2004 Conference and Expo of the Voice on the Net (VON) Coalition. Beyond the initial euphoria on getting cheap calls and being able to talk to the person on the other side of the world for the same price, as the person across town, Oram provides a list of problems and aspirations for VOIP industry. For many it currently is the price, especially if you’re an international caller or have the family all around the States. But for quite a few others the savings are miniscule, it’s the applications that count. Online voicemail, call forwarding and call logs that Vonage offers are just the small “features”, the big possibilities include plugging in the search engine to go over your voice mail and using smart routing to forward the calls from important people right to your cell phone, while the others enjoy the voicemail.