Sunday, June 8, 2003

Voice over IP Gaining Fast: Look East: On a recent trip to Japan I was stunned to discover that more than 2 million people are making their phone calls over the Internet [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] The Sunday column he links to is worth reading. Several players in the US, including AT&T, tried to jump into this in the late 90s, but they were ahead of the technology and made some unwise investments. He quotes Tom Evslin, who founded AT&T Worldnet and then left to start ITXC, maybe in frustration with AT&T's unwillingness to let VoIP undermine its own long-distance cash cow. The critical question for the US is whether the local carriers who hold the last-mile monopoly will let their own voice cash cows be slaughtered by VoIP over their DSL infrastructure. The cable alternative hasn't been very active in VoIP. Maybe they want to avoid all-out war with the local carriers, maybe the extreme asymmetry of cable IP is really a problem for VoIP. 4:58:13 PM