Uh, no John Thacker. I said “several” European countries, not all. I specifically pointed out Finland and Estonia.

I was recently reading Handelsblatt, Germany’s main business newspaper, and noticed that “Flat rate” was one of the five most common search terms on their website that day.

This is incorrect. Internet penetration was much higher in the US than in Europe in the age of the modem, due to unmetered local calling. For the same reason, there was faster uptake of DSL in Europe, due to understandable customer wishes to avoid metered local calls. (BT did not have local flat rate calling until 2000 in the UK, for instance, and only on certain plans and I believe currently limited to calls for up to an hour). Throughout the ’90s, the majority of people worldwide who accessed the Internet did so through the PSTN and modems, and unmetered calling gave the US (and other countries like Canada) an advantage in Internet adoption.

It’s no wonder than Skype and other VoIP services are more popular in countries that still have metered local calls. Also, most European countries have “incoming calls free” on cellular phones, which means that calling from a fixed line to a cell phone is more expensive than calling a landline, since the originator pays the extra costs of the network, unless you use various workarounds like VoIP. In addition, there are the various issues of international calls to consider; many people I know who use Skype use it for their international calls, and it’s easier to make more international calls when you’re a smaller countries. Calling France from the UK is expensive off standard BT PSTN service. That’s one reason why people use Skype or other services.

Years ago I was a product line manager at Computer Telephony hardware manufacturer. Back then the big applications were voice mail, automatic call distribution, and numerous variants of calling card, personal assistant and unified messaging application…

In Sweden the old monopoly company Telia stopped offering traditional phone lines a few years back. Now they only offer fiber (with voip), or wireless if you live deep down in the woods.

Secondly, it is not clear what is meant by VoIP. You include Jajah as a VoIP provider, but as I understand it, PSTN users can be their customers as well.

Thirdly, Moshe asks us to focus on unique capabilities like mashup. Of course the ultimate mashup is to combine PSTN for carrying voice and use IP connectivity for control signaling. So if mashups are going to inherit the world, then nobody will care about PSTN and VoIP dichotomy.

It was already time to show what’s going on in European VoIP. The market seems much more competitive and interesting to me. Yet the devices for fixed line replacement come unlocked and can hold more than 1 or 2 providers, like it is normally in the US.

It’s a standard to use up to 10 VoIP providers at the same time, making use of the cheapest routes that your device chooses automatically accordant to a dial plan.

I already heard of a mobile VoIP startup that left the US and concentrates entirely on Europe because “the market is more advanced and the handsets are unlocked”.