VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol, is out there, so are third generation cellular networks, wireless e-mail devices, and a convenient means of syndicating Web content into a single access point,
called RSS. However, changes come fast and furious in the technology industry, but changes in regular consumer behavior lag far behind those of early adopters. By all media accounts--meaning any of
the countless stories out there about how VoIP spells the end for the public switch telephone--the land line phone should be dead already. To be sure, VoIP gets a lot of press from providers like
Skype and Vonage and cable companies like Time Warner Cable, but for all the hoopla, the biggest reason traditional phone companies lost 5.7 million subscribers in 2005 was wireless, not VoIP. A Bell
South executive even said he doesn't see VoIP as nearly as big a threat to their business as wireless, an industry most big phone companies are also involved in. VoIP has a ways to go before it
becomes mainstream, as consumer adoption has yet to really pick up. Lingering questions about the technology's reliability still loom, for example. But it could be that consumers just don't feel the
need to transition their phone service. Some analysts think VoIP will be swallowed up in the melee over the next big Internet phenomenon: video.
Read the whole story at Cnet News.com »
