Doesn't it seem karmic or ironic that on the day WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers is convicted on nine counts of fraud, it is disclosed Apple CEO Steve Jobs was only paid US$1 last year and received no stock options or restricted stock. It is a classic case of avarvice vs. strategic/marketing intelligence. Ebbers was a telecom opportunist because he discovered a way to parlay smaller acquisitions into larger ones until he had created WorldCom - a.k.a a telecom Ponzi scheme. Jobs is a marketing opportunist who has a track record of recognizing bleeding edge technology, and using marketing savvy to drive it into the mainstream. This is not to suggest Jobs isn't driven by money but he's smart enough to realize in today's Sarbanes-Oxley/disgraced CEO world, it's a no-brainer from a PR standpoint to temporarily walk away from the pot of gold.

Don’t know many details but VoIP, Inc. apparently plans to introduced a free consumer VOIP service using the 1-800 Talk Time brand, which it purchased in February. While I believe free telephony is inevitable as cablecos and carriers bundle it into broadband packages, it is surprising a small player such as VoIP Inc. has the chutzpah and financial resources to do it first. Then again, VoIP Inc. is opportunistic given it wasn’t even in the Internet telephony business two years ago. It will be interesting to see VoIP’s Talk Time offer, and how Vonage, et al respond.

I’ve been playing around the Treo 650 for the past few days, and been quite impressed. In many respects, it's a big move to the all-in-one device I want to carry around. While far from perfect, it has some appealing features: a good Web browser, calendar, contacts, MP3 player and telephone. As a long-time Blackberry user, the Treo's e-mail system is not as good but it seems fine for people who like mobile e-mail but don't see it as a must-have. Before jumping on the Treo bandwagon, I'd have to think about the cost of buying a Treo, the monthly service fees, and whether it's supported by my company’s corporate e-mail server. But all in all, it’s a nice wireless device.

Ronald Gruia has an intriguing posting about how reliable VOIP needs to be in light of outages at Vonage and 8x8 recently. Does VOIP needs to have five 9s reliability to become a mainstream technology? Or can it thrive with slightly lower quality if it provides users with reduced costs and more features. For the timing being, I suspect bleeding/leading edge consumers - residential more than corporate - will accept less-than-perfect service if they feel they are getting a deal. For the mass market, which has little or no tolerance for technical snafus, less than 100% reliability will stop VOIP from gaining much momentum. This explains why cablecos such as Rogers talk about high-quality service that will be an alternative to what Bell Canada offers. Rogers doesn't talk so much about low prices as its does about doing what Bell already does.