VoIP Watch

iotum-PhoneGnome Momentum

Jim Courtney has a detailed and totally relevant post about the value proposition PhoneGnome and iotum are bringing to the Voice 2.0 world.

Kapustka Brings Media To Pulver

Around all the hoopla last week on other matters, I almost overlooked that pal Paul Kapustka has joined the PulverMedia team.

In my book he brings real media experience to the rapidly growing Pulver group of ventures. It's a great hire for Jeff and the gang.

Times Have Changed

A most defining moment occured today at the resort Helene (my fiance) and I are staying at for the wedding of a personal friend of 30 years. At breakfast we had our laptops at the communal table where many of the "parents" friends were seated, many reading copies of the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, both of which I read online.

Someone remarked that it was a shame we had to work, which was ironic, for I was reading the Times too, only digitally, not the dead tree version. You see, the older generation views anything with a keyboard as something one uses for work not as an information appliance. For those of us who enjoy being connected, it's a whole different story.

PhoneGnome and iotum Hook Up

Bruce Stewart of O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony site has a killer review of something I'm really excited about.

Given both companies are clients I'd rather let your read Bruce's well written and totally right on the money piece about something that makes so much sense it just had to happen.

In fairness Aswath Rao also thought this was logical long ago so his views are expected sometime soon...

More On Yahoo & AT&T VoIP Messenger Deal

Based on some G2 I've been able to discover from some well healed off-shore type players in telcom who have played in the telco game for many years and made a bundle off of selling things to SBC I was able to ferret out a bit about the Yahoo/AT&T VoIP marriage and what it may mean...

First it's really the same Yahoo Messenger client we all know and love, with the only difference being that it will pick up some co-branding with AT&T's new logo and the Yahoo routing engine gets used to determine how to handle he calls. Can you spell the DialPad acquisition? That means when it detects the inbound IP address falls into the 13 region that was formally known as SBC AT&T will terminate the voice traffic over the AT&T IP-PSTN gateway which is what was more than likely what was used for CallVantage, something Yahoo isn't ready to market with AT&T just yet..

So what does this mean for each side...A huge win for Yahoo and some great work by Brad Garlinghouse and his biz dev team at Yahoo. By setting up a least cost routing engine at Yahoo and plugging multiple carriers into it Yahoo ID becomes more valuable over time than a phone number, so a SIP address linked to it becomes the person’s real phone number as a result.

The reason? The termination costs are so low that AT&T will never see profits, and as there is more and more adoption of the Yahoo Messenger with Voice product is, the more money AT&T gets to lose, while Yahoo keeps all of the voice revenue, ad revenue, and breakage from the unused minutes on prepaid accounts.

This is a much smarter deal than what Microsoft has with MSN whose new Messenger uses exclusively MCI. Why? Because you can monetize and make granular the competition and the options all the way down to specific routes and even time of day. Again…DialPad.

This means that as a carrier, the only routes that will be handed off to you are the cheapest ones you offer. So if you have a scheme whereby you have some routes that are profitable and others that are not, the most likely case is that you will never see traffic to your profitable routes. Therefore, as a carrier, the more traffic you get terminated from a LCR engine like Yahoo's, the more money you will potentially lose no make.

This deals keeps looking better and better for Yahoo...

Yahoo/AT&T Deal--Only Missing Mobile

Earlier this week Yahoo and AT&T extended the previous SBC/Yahoo on ramp deal to include VoIP.

In many ways this was expected, but my instincts tell me that it's more of a tip of an iceberg play and that Cingular's involvement with a growing need for a Fixed Mobile Convergence play is likely the next big step for all involved.

Vonage Asking For Skype Dollars

Vonage is seeking a $2.6 billion dollar valuation in it's IPO filing according to Reuters.

Vonage Holdings Corp. may offer up to 31.25 million shares priced at between $16 and $18 a share in an initial public offering, according to a regulatory filing that started to surface on Friday.

 Citigroup, Deutsche Bank Securities and UBS Investment Bank, would value the Holmdel, New Jersey-based company at about $2.6 billion, based on the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company also applied for a New York Stock Exchange listing under the symbol "VG".

I wonder if that means VERY GOOD?

8x8 Small Bix Deal Via CompUSA

CompUSA now has a deal to be the retail outlet for Packet8's small biz offering.

Vonage Gets Into The Cloud

In what is a poential Check-Mate move over Skype and one with much deeper implications, Vonage has made a move in the UK to introduce WiFi based phone services with the Cloud.

If they can successfully make this happen in the USA via the non Google, Non Earthlink WiFi cloud like communities in Cerritos, Las Vegas, Encinitas in CA, Tempe, Chandler and Scottsdale in AZ and elsewhere this could be a very big step forward for the company that is in registration with the SEC here in the USA.

What makes this different from Skype offering is simple. SIP. That also makes inter-connection and roaming very easy to execute on and then opens the door even more to the world of FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) so companies in that space like BridgePort Networks become more and more important every day.

Intel Adds VoIP Board Motherboards

Intel is adding a VoIP board to it's motherboard along with drivers for CounterPath and Skype. While one would be tempted to think that this has to do with today, it has more to do with their long term WiMax strategy.