I'm In the Southwest In Flight Magazine Talking About VoIP

Yesterday wasn't the typical Monday for my fiancée. Each Monday one of us travels on Southwest back to either Sacramento (where Helene's a physician) or back to San Diego (unless I have a client trip).

When Helene got on the morning flight north she flipped through the Southwest Magazine and found the story that I was interviewed for back in the Spring by Heather Millar. She also realized that being engaged to me makes her "famous" too now.

Here's the opening lines of the story which I think actually helped explain VoIP to the masses.

Andy Abramson says he wouldn't have gotten engaged without his internet phone. Abramson, a marketing entrepreneur based in the San Diego, California suburb of Del Mar, spends a lot his time traveling for business. His fiancée is a doctor who lives nearly 500 miles north in Sacramento, California. But Abramson says he has no trouble maintaining this long-distance romance.

"Helen and I are able to talk, stay in touch, route our calls, be found," Abramson explains. "She only has to call my one number and not worry where I am, what phone I'm using, what hotel I'm at."

All this cost savings, convenience and up to the moment connectivity is possible because Abramson uses something called "Voice Over Internet Protocol" or VoIP. Instead of sending his sweet nothings to his sweetheart over the dedicated copper or fiber optic wire of a traditional telephone company, Abramson's words are deconstructed into digital data packets that travel various paths over the Internet and are then reassembled into his fiancée earpiece.

Millar also got one of the key points I tell everyone who asks me "which" VoIP provider to go with.

"My advice is to go with a company that's going to be around for a while," says Abramson, who also writes a blog, http://andyabramson.blogs.com/voipwatch.

The story is quite good, and I'm contacting SouthWest, the airline I love, to try and get a PDF file of the story so I can post it for everyone to see :-)