[...] SBC COO Randall Stephenson might think that $4 billion is nothing, but when he says, “This seems to come up every so often. We always look at this, we are kind of old-fashioned network telephone types. The reality is that there is a lot of cost behind providing these services ….As long as there is a cost attached to it [the connection into the home], free is just illogical to me,” the man makes a lot of sense. Stephenson’s swipe was at Rupert Murdoch, who told the same Goldman Sachs Conference attendees that voice will be free within three years. Murdoch’s new found love for Internet & VoIP will soon wane, much like his “fascination of China.” Y’all remember the first time he fell in love with online, bought Delphi and ran it into ground. via IP Democracy In VoIP (the New Phone) Posted Thursday, September 22, 2005 at 11:18 PM PT [...]

[...] Mark Pincus, founder of Tribe.net says that if he was Rupert Murdoch, he would buy Craigslist. Forget everything else. I am not so sure. Murdoch has publicly stated that he is interested in getting search capabilities and having a VoIP play. Fortune says News Corp, might have looked at a tiny search-engine, Clusty. The there were those rumors about Blinkx, and Skype. [...]

If he buys Vonage, that chips away at my thesis a bit. Does anyone under 30 use Vonage?

I don’t think Vonage falls into the Voip category that News Corp is targeting. I would expect News Corp to be interested in buying an AOL on the high end or a Gizmo Project or TelTel on the low end. These would attract online activity leading to ad revenue. Vonage is a phone service that has limited online appeal.

They might consider Net2Phone or Earthlink in the middle range.

New Corp might consider a Net2Phone or Earthlink in the middle range.

FWD would be a fine choice for News Corp for a good many reasons, not the least of which are it’s SIP infrastructure and the service’s remarkable list of partnering agreements.

how about counterpath(eyebeam)someone will pick this one soon or later.

Xten has more corporate customers than end-users. It’s business is based on selling it’s software platform. The former cofounder of Xten left the company and went to Eyeball. The recent CEO left after only 2 months. If someone buys them, it would only be for a few million. It smells like a dead cat, Morris.

I don’t think Vonage would want to sell to Fox. A better suited partner would be someone like SK-Earthlink or T-Mobile. Cellular, Wifi and Voip from one company could make for a revolutionary offering.

Rick

that was excellent move by Mark Bruk to kick recent president out,the guy was use car salesman,at the same time he hired Jason Fischl(much bigger then Erick in voip industry)who through sipfoundry founded TELTEL,you don’t see the bright side and just bash former xten,don’t know why?

Rick —take a look to these links

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