The Internet and the future of voice services

Does all the hype behind Skype phenomenon make any sense? I think it does. I'm not sure that Skype could be the new Google overnight but, I think the impact of the Net Telephony on the traditional Telco's business will be dramatic. The P2P concept itself is the back-to-basics point of view that could guarantee the future of voice services over the Internet, and the network could be viewed as the convergent infrastructure we need to support the future convergence of services.

The VoIP technology appeared more than ten years ago; and all that time the traditional Telcos have been deploying more and more capacity in their core transport networks, allowing the increasing data traffic, and now, when the broadband access technologies permit a whole new breed of services and applications that run over the Internet infrastructure, they are trying to avoid the development of new business models based on them, because they are not ready to capitalize on them: is it ironic or not?

At the end of the day, the VoIP technology has a long road ahead, mainly due to the regulatory issues that need to be fixed, before the services associated with it can be offered to end consumers; but it's a technology that is here to stay, and we can think of Skype as a case study for the development of the new business model for Telcos. I hope they don't make the same mistake the music industry made with P2P networks.

You can read more on this topic in BusinessWeek Online:

Net Phone Calls, Free -- And Clear

Skype Is "What Evolution Is All About"

The Word on Skype: "It Really Works"