Skip to main content

VoIP grows up and goes High Street

Once seen as the technology for geeks VoIP is going to take a step into the mainstream following the announcement by Dixons, and it's sister chains of high street shops, to begin selling the FreeTalk VoIP phone kit.

The founders of FreeServe internet providers think the timing is right to launch a starter kit that plugs directly into your broadband channel. There is no need to be PC bound to get cheap national and international calls.

The Register report a statement by national carrier British Telecom that they are not overly concerned as they think that the public are not ready for the technology. Maybe it's just a bitter pill after the poor take up of BT Communicator. As usual market forces will determine the success of the technology or not. The price will pay a large part, obviously, and possibly the fact that it's not BT will help. There could well be skepticism that the BT offering was not as cheap as it could get; a bit unfair on one of the old style carriers that is trying it's best to shift and adapt to the threat that VoIP brings to their dominance.

For those of us who are happy with the PC based solutions, like Skype, but would like the convenience of movement while you talk there are other options already available today..

If your PC supports it you could by yourself a Bluetooth headset, sure that solves the problem. You have another option as well, and Siemens can combine your DECT phone with your VoIP solution with the use of Gigaset and a cordless phone.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PC over IP - The Teradici Effect

Teradici are hoping to blur the lines between PC and Data Centre. Their solution allows a use to view multiple screens and control the blade PC over IP. This is kind of like the dumb terminals with a new edgy deployment. The intention is that all of the computing power is performed offsite in a centralized area, the Data Centre, and this will save on power and maintenance costs as the engineers are co-located with the hardware and therefore don't have to go out to the client site for basic maintenance. The Teradici Company Article found in the Wall Street Journal
Post a Comment
Read more

In the overlap of technology, marketing and social media the QR Code is critical

Outside of consulting on telecommunications, CIO advisory, and the business adoption of technology I also completed an MBA.  One of the projects was on the potential use cases of two dimensional barcodes. Today the QR Code , one of many types of 2D codes, is seen as being a critical component of any good marketing plan.  As a natural integration between social media and devices I would extend VMob Bob's question " What can a mobile operator learn from Facebook ?" and also ask how can they step and start to make innovations with the extensions to social media that already exist today?
Post a Comment
Read more

e-Olympics

This year's Olympics should be the best ever for coverage. Fring are looking for onsite commentators and as a means to encourage people are offering a 3.5G phone as your reporters tool. I hope that this will be the games of the micro blog. The potential for services like Twitter or Jaiku to open up access to the games in a way never seen before is encouraging. Essentially there are three dimensions to the games: Nation Event Athlete Typically broadcast of the games ha content defined by the nation. The USA channels closely follow the USA squad, the same for UK, NZ Australia etc. This is targeted at the national pride. For those people who are actively engaged in an event themselves, marathon, it's the event that is king. There will still be an element of "my country" but this is equally balanced by "my sport". The final element is the followers of a specific athlete. Friends, family and fans may elect to follow all of the events surrounding a person. ...
Post a Comment
Read more