A View on View :: VOIP Trends for 2005

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VOIP Trends for 2005

by Mark Evans on Mon 03 Jan 2005 05:23 PM EST | Permanent Link

PricewaterhouseCoopers has published an interesting list of key VOIP trends for 2005. Some of the most eye-catching issues are:
- pricing: PWC doesn't believe the market has bottomed out yet and asks the obvious question "how low can they go?"
- regulation: what kind of approach will the FCC really adopt - hands off or hands on?
- consolidation: the big telcos and cablecos will snaup up small VOIP service providers (Vonage, 8x8?)
PWC also has a list of companies to watch. This include Skype, Vonage, AT&T, Cablevision, Cisco, Nortel, Lucent, Juniper, IBM, Microsoft and SunRocket.
I'm particularly interested in some of the non-traditional VOIP players. IBM attracts attention because it puts the spotlight on the large corporate market, which has been somewhat ignored as consumer VOIP takes off. Microsoft is an interesting choice because the software giant has yet to make much of an impact in VOIP, although PWC believes the company could "make quite a splash" if and/or when it decides to make a move. SunRocket stands out because I hadn't heard of them yet. The company, which was started by some ex-MCI executives, is offering a US$199 "Annual Edition" product, which includes a year of home telephone service, two phone numbers, enhanced voice mail and 100 free minutes of international service.

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Re: VOIP Trends for 2005

by Anonymous on Mon 03 Jan 2005 05:47 PM EST | Permanent Link

The attraction of VoIP is the spectre of almost free LD. In the end, for telcos and consumers it just means cheaper and cheaper minutes. The true unrealized attraction should be packetized Voice-over-any-device. Qzoxy (www.qzoxy.com) is a step in that direction. It combines an Internet Messenger-like experience with integrated voice using Skype.

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\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>