Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Readies New VoIP Service
Rob writes "Yahoo is readying to capture a larger piece of the VoIP market and will announce a
new VoIP product during the next two weeks. The new service would be comparable to
Skype Technologies SA's, said Safa Rashtchy, senior research analyst at Wall Street
researcher Piper Jaffray Co, which makes a market in Yahoo stock. The impending move by
Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo into the VoIP
arena would potentially be disruptive."
once the larger urban areas (read 50% of America) are able to get broadband for $20-25/month, without having to pay for a mandatory phone line or cable tv along with that, THEN VOIP will be disruptive.
But as long as the vast majority cannot get cheap broadband BY ITSELF, VOIP will languish.
Here is a theory: besides wifi, the only thing that may push down rates and packages to that mentioned above is the upcoming digital Tv switchover. Broadcasting in dgital, each tv station will be able to broadcast 3 or perhaps 6 distinct channels. Thus in many urban areas, where you might have 4 to 6 channels that most people can get via rabbit ears, that might turn into 12 to 36 channels of content. Thus, broadcast tv could compete with cable tv. Thus, cable tv will lose a lot of subscribers. Thus, they will have to sell broadband cheapers. Thus the Telcos will have to sell broadband cheaper. All the telcos will be starting up their own dsl tv.
So it may be tv that pushes broadband down, not wifi.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
* Dialpad (http://www.dialpad.com/) was acquired by Yahoo! two months ago.
* Yahoo! has access numerous deals with top last-mile telecoms such as SBC in the US, BT in UK, Rogers in CA, etc.
My prediction: two months after Yahoo! starts to provide VOIP, Google will do so and then Slashdot will have an article annoucing that Google now offers VOIP and is the first one doing so and Yahoo! is copying Google.