Internet Telephony

It’s not often I feel prescient, but as I was finishing up this feature – about carriers embracing VoIP through strategic approaches that include grow your own, acquisition, and partnering – this story came over the transom (through e-mail, actually), about Skype and Verizon Wireless (VZ) holding a joint press conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. To recount: “The ...

Probing the business market for its popular Web-based VoIP application, Google Inc. (GOOG) said it will release a premium version of Google Voice for enterprises in 2010. Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard made the comment in an interview with eWeek over the weekend. Since its release last year, Google Voice, which unifies various devices including home phones, mobile devices and deskphones ...

Since AT&T filed a “comment” to the FCC at the end of 2009, calling for a definite timeline to “sunset” the PSTN, there’s been much discussion over the future of the old legacy Ma Bell network. Over at Squawkbox, Alec Saunders posted that mostly people are asking the wrong question; the real issue is not “whether VoIP will finally triumph ...

AT&T Inc. is planning to invest billions in upgrading its wireless network this year. It’s an effort to keep up with the iPhone-related mobile data traffic explosion, which has resulted in dropped calls and painfully slow throughput in some congested markets. It’s a problem likely to be exacerbated by the addition of the iPad and the ability to make VoIP ...

As we head into the 2009 holidays it’s a good time to pause and ask: What are the defining technologies that will exert the most powerful effect on the telecom industry in 2010? Two of the likely innovations are high definition (HD) voice and video connectivity. Offering applications in both the consumer and enterprise space, HD voice substantially improves the ...