According to Infonetics Research, service provider spent $1.73-billion on next-generation voice equipment last year. The market is expected to more than triple to $5.8-billion by 2008. Infonetics analyst Kevin Mitchell said the investment is being driven by carriers looking for new services to differentiate themselves from rivals. "Carriers in North America and Asia continue down the modernization path, and Western Europe is awakening," he said. "We expect 2005 to be much like 2004 was for North America: a year when many more major carriers get behind VoIP and begin the long investment cycle and service rollout."

In light of my post on Canada's VOIP landscape, it was pointed out another player is SpectraVoice, which provides service to residential and small business customers. The company's residential plans, available in eight cities in Ontario, Quebec and B.C., cost $14.99 to $39.99 a month.

Boingo is jumping on the Skype bandwagon - or is the other around? - with the launch of a beta service called Skype Zones that will give Skype users Wi-Fi access using Boingo's software and its 18,000 hotspots. The cost? Unlimited Skype-Boingo access for $7.95 a month or $2.95 for a two-hour session. The deal looks like a win-win for both sides. Boingo gets a much-needed shot in the arm to increase hotspot usage and make some money, while Skype boosts its user-friendly factor and makes its service even more mainstream. One of the things that continues to impress me about Skype's strategic evolution is how it has gone from a free rebelous P2P service just a few years ago to being an Internet telephony player with 45 million users, including a growing base of paying customers.
In related news, Samsung and LG both plans to roll out new hybrid wireless phones using technology from Kineto Wireless. The phones willl be able to pass calls from a cellular network to a Wi-Fi network without an interuption in the connection.