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Google Plans Free VoIP In the UK

Posted by timothy on from the thinking-ahead dept.

jarich writes "According to this news article, Google may be preparing to offer free Voice Over IP telephone service in the UK. This sounds related to a previous Slashdot article about Google starting to buy dark fiber. So what are they planning? A free service like Skype (computer to computer only) or more along the lines of Lingo or Vonage?"

9 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Skype is not computer to computer only by Nermal6693 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can also call a regular phone with Skype. It's not free, but you can do it.

  2. Kind of restrictive... by stever00t · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's a 32 word limit per call.

  3. Endgame by locokamil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Once again, I find myself wondering what Google's endgame is. Are they going to remain at the forefront of search technology, or are they going to attempt to orchestrate an M$ style invasion of our lives?

  4. Possible Google Plan... by madstork2000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if this is a step towards making VoIP basically a free tool, much like the web is today. It would be interesting if Google or another
    VoIP provider go to an advertising model to support free VoIP.

    I think it would be interesting to have ads while a call is being connected (i.e. ringing). It seems like they could pipe audio ads down the wire during the inevitable pause while the system tries to track down a cell phone, or the long distance call is being routed...

    A company like Google could also put a phone front end on to the search engine, I'm thinking along the lines of directory assistance, but instead of limiting info to just addresses / phones numbers, the Google directory assistance would search the internet and speak the results (and a few related ads) over the phone.

    They might even have the CPU power to do adequate speech recognotion. All told it is pretty easy to imagine a system taking adavtage of the newest phones, with enhanced SMS, web interfaces, along with a voice interface. It would also be cool if you could specify where you want your search result output to go. Maybe if they had VoIP and some type of phone based interafce you could have your results displayed on your phone, pda or spoken. With a viable VoIP perhaps you could have the results faxed to you at a hotel. I'd also like to see the option of having the results emailed.

    All told these relatively small technical advancements, would be large strides in making Google even more ubiqutious. Non-computer users and casual users would have another resource to get and retrieve information in the "real-world".

    I just wish I was smart enough to get a job with them . . .

  5. fixed link by Devil's+BSD · · Score: 5, Informative

    Someone left a bracket on there, so...
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1454225, 00.html

    --
    I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
  6. What Skype is missing though... Skype IN by buro9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Skype to Skype... fine, cool, fantastic.

    Skype to Phone... fine, cool, fantastic.

    Phone to Skype... missing link.

    Without that last bit there is no incentive for someone to make a move to VOIP on a permanent basis for all of their calls.

    Why? Because you still have to keep a landline or mobile to be able to receive calls from regular phones... and because the cost of making a call to a mobile is prohibitive, it's likely that you keep a bundled (with TV package) landline.

    If the weight Google helps to make this a feature that is developed, then we may start to see a willingness to switch in large numbers a reality.

    As it stands at the moment... my (red neck equiv') mother was impressed, but she just sees it as one more way to do things, and she's very lazy and is still more likely to pick up and dial a regular phone. Show her she doesn't need the landline (by receiving calls, thus 100% functionality) and then there'll be something impressive.

    What has all this to do with Google? Well Skype In as I'll call it... it requires a network, something has to receive calls and store messages for you whilst your computer is off... who's to say context related sound adverts wouldn't be appended to the answer phone service... how would that differ from Gmail advertising?

    Things to think about :)

    1. Re:What Skype is missing though... Skype IN by blake182 · · Score: 5, Informative
      There was an interview on Engadget last November with Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennström:

      What is SkypeIn and what are the plans for it?

      SkypeIn will allow phone calls from the traditional phone network in to Skype. We don't have a specific launch date yet, but hope to offer it sometime this winter.

  7. Total message integration by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Voicemail shows up in your gmail inbox, e-mail gets summarized in voice messages, voicemail is indexed...

    And it all has ads.

  8. No substance corroborating the statement by sipmeister · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Can someone please point out where in the article the claim that Google will offer VoIP service is substantiated? As far as I can tell, it's based on speculations by "Julian Hewitt, senior partner at Ovum, a telecoms consultancy".

    Some comments on the article below:

    "The technology that will enable Google to move in on the market has been around for some time. Software by the London-based company, Skype, has been downloaded nearly 54 million times around the world but no large telecommunication firms have properly exploited it."
    The technology has indeed been around for a long time, and Skype, a proprietary walled garden system, is definitely not the first or only one to use it. So why is Skype implicated here?
    "The basic cost of making calls across the internet is almost nil. The real cost is in developing the software; after that, the service exploits available internet capacity."
    So why would Google buy dark fiber if the call "exploits available internet capacity"?
    "In addition, the sound quality of calls across the internet can be poor and the connections can be less reliable."
    As can been witnessed by using Skype, or other applications which incorporate modern codecs, for example the freely available wideband iLBC codec (http://www.ilbcfreeware.org), the voice quality over a broadband connection is usually excellent, in the case of iLBC much better then PSTN. The biggest issue is latency, which is increased in the case of Skype, where calls are often routed over media proxies to traverse NAT's.

    Overall a poor article, "By Elizabeth Judge, Telecoms Correspondent". But what can be expected of the Times?