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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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?

Access as infrastructure, what does this mean for Telco 2.0?

Having recently attended a seminar by Catherine Middleton from Ryerson on Australia's NBN initiative it got me thinking about "access as infrastructure". The Australian Government is investing $B's of public and private capital in a national broadband network that is a fibre to the premise platform, although for distant and remote sites it will most likely be a fixed wireless solution.  The proposition from Dr. Middleton is that ubiquitous access will create a platform for services that separates competition from access, sounds like Telco 2.0. The question I posed was if the idea is a common platform but close to 10% of that access will be at 12Mbps rather than 100Mbps (fixed wireless versus fibre) then surely the lowest common denominator will prevail and services will be designed for 12Mbps.  You would then question the rationale of FTTP or FTTH when you could go fixed wireless.  Over time LTE and similar technologies will see an increase in speed that will of...

A Phone or a Swiss Army Knife?

It's getting to that time when I should start looking for my new handset. I choose the word carefully as today you are very lucky to find just a phone. Most handsets today are either a phone and media player, a phone and a camera (sometimes video), a phone and a PDA the list of combinations goes on and on. Now this might be great in the marketing room "what can we do next?" but the point that is lost on many of the manufacturers is this; people want a phone first the rest is secondary. Many of the hybrid handsets look good, can have great MP3 playback but suffer in size, ease of use of the main function (phone calls) or have poor battery life because of all the other gadgets hanging off of it. It's very similar to the Swiss Army Knife, the knife is often too small to be used for much over opening your letters, the screwdriver is hard to use because the size of the body means you can't get to a lot of the screws on objects, the pliers have little leverage because t...