Ask Dave Taylor: Tech and Business

Friday

VOIP news from Microsoft, MCI and Om Malik

One of the business segments I track is the emerging field of Voice over Internet (VOIP) telephony. It's a sea-change in a billion dollar industry and competitors in this space range from open source developers like Gizmo to huge traditional telephone companies like MCI, cable TV companies like Comcast and just about anyone else who can craft a dozen lines of code and get some decent distribution.

Yesterday was an interesting day in the VOIP world, spurred on by the Consumer Electronics Show, no doubt, and I wrote two articles that I think you'd be interested in reading:

  • Are VOIP solutions proprietary and insular, or not?

 • Microsoft Partners with MCI for VOIP solution

I use a number of different VOIP solutions in my office, ranging from Skype with some USB headphones to Vbuzzer plugged directly into a multi-line telephone, so if you have questions about VOIP and telephony, please don't hesitate to ask me about VOIP.