Canada Post Urges Cautions with VoIP

Canada's national newspaper has run a story citing a UK report about VoIP that urges caution.

I tend to agree, as VoIP, while ready for prime time, is still an evolving form of communication, just as the telephone was in the 1800's when invented. Those who can afford to experiment will find though the experience is much more like cell phones were in the early 80s and realize that the improvements will come faster and reliability will be better.

As the broadband experience only gets better, companies in the VoIP space will only benefit by it.

Comments

[Infinite Gravity Data Services]

Food for thought: in an effort to combat terrorism, various governments are trying to force ISP's (et al) to allow large-scale packet sniffing. Presumably, VoIP data would be subject to this, and the voice-recognition technology to automate this task is probably not too far off.

Could it be feasible for governments to easily listen in on your phone calls? Perhaps there is something to be said for old-fashioned snail-mail. It wouldn't be possible for an entity to surreptiously scan all the copy being sent through the post office. At least not on a massive scale.

[Mike French]

I just love it when our newspapers here in Canada publish a negative item about tech. If it were Telus or Bell Canada or one of the other CRTC protected telco's doing VOIP rollout's the Post would sing praises. Fact is Canada has excellent DSL & Cable connections, with cable being the largest. Shaw Cable has already announced they will be providing VOIP soon. Let's no pooh-pooh the horse before it gets out of the barn. Hey this is Canada , land where the media is all controlled by a few and not the many.

[Dan York]

Andy,
This posting gave me a great laugh as my first reaction when I saw the subject line was "What the heck is Canada Post doing even caring about VoIP?" Up here in Canada, "Canada Post" is the equivalent of the US Postal Service. Once I understood that it was an article from the "National Post", one of the main national newspapers (the other main one being "The Globe and Mail"), I understood better. Thanks for the pointer... and for the (unintended, I know) laugh.
Dan