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AT&T Announces VoIP Program
An anonymous reader writes "DeviceForge reports that AT&T has unveiled a program to foster the 'development, delivery, and adoption' of emerging voice over IP (VoIP) applications, capabilities, and devices. The program, based on proprietary AT&T specifications, is intended to enable 'select vendors' to test applications and equipment against AT&T specs and thereby ensure compatibility with AT&T's evolving VoIP communication services. AT&T has invited industry leaders representing application developers, equipment, device manufacturers, and silicon vendors to participate in the program in order to 'shape and scale' the emerging VoIP market."
Indeed. They're now *fighting* VOIP, not embracing it.
Also, great timing for this story - right on the heels of the asterisk announcement.
If you thought p2p was a disruptive technology, just wait until the masses get a hold of VOIP (yes, I'm asserting that voip is "not there" yet, but it will be soon).
You think **AA lobbying congress is bad? Just wait until every established telecom interest digs their tendrils into capitol hill on this.
All the infrastructure owners will be relgated to selling bits per second instead of high-margin channellized services. And those bits per second are going to be dirt cheap thanks to pr0n (not kidding).
The telecoms who fight voip and bandwidth commoditization are going to die overnight. The ones who see that this is where it's going will focus on how to sell raw bps (if they have infrastructure to do that) or they'd better just close their doors.