Some Quick News Notes

I'm supposed to be on vacation, but I feel the obligation to bring some news items or stories of note to light.

GIPS is providing Baidu their VideoEngine to have real time video chat inside the Baidu Instant Messaging platform. GIPS has new leadership as well now so maybe we'll see a kindler and gentler company that wants to work with, not just sell to their licensees.

AT&T reports that in the San Diego area they are gaining subscribers for uVerse, their bundled phone, data and TV service. I'm in the area that's not yet being offered it, so I'm unable to see if its any good. I'm planning on installing it and seeing how it compares, but with Cox (my cable company) likely boosting speeds to over 100 megs by 2009 it's already a non starter. Why AT&T went with another copper solution when fiber is the way to go shows that they are looking to be the last century phone company. FIOS from Verizon and the SureWest Fiber we have in our Sacramento home is the way to go.

T-Mobile's national rollout of HotSpot@Home is proving to be a success for them. The irony here is they seem to have no problem free riding on the cable MSO's networks or over some telco's DSL lines that are naked without phone service. I wonder if they feel the same way about Mobile VoIP on their data networks (I know you know the answer to that one so call it a rhetorical question.) Red Herring has additional insight.

Fierce VoIP, which has been revitalized under Doug Mohney, points to a New York Law Journal brief on the legal implications of VoIP as evidence.

Telemedicine is growing in Ohio. Since I'm married to a physician who is very much tech savvy, this means that the it's more than likely she'll be doing things like this soon. One more reason for the need for bigger bandwidth.