Skype will release a version of its VoIP application for the iPhone and the iPod touch on Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal. I was the first to report news of the pending release last week. (Gee, thanks for giving us credit, WSJ… Read More »
Tech
Truphone, a London-based mobile VoIP startup, tomorrow is expected to introduce a flat-rate plan (TruUnlimited for Landlines) that would allow its customers unlimited calls to landlines in 38 countries for just over $14 a month. In some countries — the U.S., Canada, China and Hong… Read More »
Exclusive Heads up: A few months ago, I asked Skype CEO Josh Silverman when was he going to launch the iPhone version of the P2P voice and IM service that has now been downloaded more than 405 million times. He smiled and said, “Stay tuned.”… Read More »
TeleGeography says that cross-border telephone traffic grew 14 percent in 2007 and is estimated to have grown 12 percent in 2008, to 384 billion minutes. Falling prices and rising popularity have flattened the revenues (see graph below the fold). The big bump in minutes (and… Read More »
Landline losses at large (U.S.) phone companies such as AT&T and Verizon have become so routine that we stopped paying attention. This graphic in a research report by Leichtman Research brought them back into focus. In 2008, phone companies lost about 7.94 million lines, while… Read More »
Updated: Skype has announced it will play nice with corporate PBX systems that use Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). While details thus far are fuzzy, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Skype-for-SIP product will be introduced as a beta product and will be tested by a… Read More »
If you asked me what I missed the most about my iPhone, I would have said Truphone, because it was the cheapest and easiest way to call my mom in India. Well, today you can add Nimbuzz to that list. The company just announced a… Read More »
GrandCentral, a “one number for life” service provider acquired by Google in July 2007 is being reborn as Google Voice, a comprehensive service that is essentially a Microsoft Office-type suite of communications-related services. I say that because the new service is a collection… Read More »
Update: If shabby treatment of its customers and draconian policies are any indication, then Comcast has been behaving like a plain-old phone company for a long time. I say that because the company emailed us today to let us know that it’s now the third-largest… Read More »
Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, once famously said that voice was going to be free. She was wrong in ponying up billions of dollars for Skype, but she was right in her assertion about voice. Thanks to European broadband service providers treating voice as… Read More »
I am a pretty big fan of services like Got Voice and SpinVox that essentially take your voicemails, transcribe them and send them to you as text messages for quick and easy consumption. London-based SpinVox is the big daddy amongst all these services and works… Read More »
The iPhone and the Apple App Store may have set a new standard for design and availability of mobile apps, but the iPhone operates within the same decades-old voice quality constraints as other handsets. Indeed, the rapid pace of handset innovation does not change the fact… Read More »
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