Hop 255

Internet Video Conferenceing

State of the art video conferencing today from Sony and tomorrow from LifeSize?

Charging for Calls

Flavor Sofa is a new service which allows users of VoIP or Instant Messaging to charge for calls. Not a lot of sellers at the moment but to be fair it has just launched. On the other hand paying someone $4.99 per minute to learn about SMS is probably not for the average punter. And I am not sure you could learn to fly a helicopter over Skype, even at $1.99 per minute. They also probably went a bit overboard with the spam solution angle in the press release  when they claim: "...because callers have to pay, the system is a very effective spam blocker. If you charge $10 to answer calls to your Skype address, you'll only hear from callers who are reasonably serious."  Exactly! You won't get calls at all from friend or foe.

Then again there are sillier charges in telecoms such as data roaming. 10 pounds per megabyte! No wonder many of the mobile carriers are  not thrilled about handsets with wifi.

Microsoft VoIP

Microsoft has unveiled the beat of its new messenger service which includes VoIP. It includes advertising which hop255 has frequently predicted someone would try and ebay has been looking at with Skype. The mapping aspects are interesting.

FCC Agrees Mergers

The FCC has given the thumbs up for the mergers of Verizon with MCI and SBC with AT&T. The Commission also adopted in the Order as enforceable conditions certain voluntary commitments made by the applicants.

Two of interest are:

15. The applicants committed, for a period of three years, to maintain settlement-free peering arrangements with at least as many providers of Internet backbone services as they did in combination on the Merger Closing Dates.

19. The applicants committed for a period of two years to conduct business in a way that comports with the Commission’s Internet policy statement issued in September.

That should go some way to assuring concerns of walled gardens in terms of what applications users can access and use as well as competition in backbone markets.

New Skype Competitors

New Skype competitors are emerging all the time. Two say they are offering free calls back into the PSTN, for fixed lines, in a number of countries. These include VoIPBuster and VoIPCheap. Hop255 has discussed French VoIP companies, such as NetAppel, doing this before. All three have to pay termination fees, assuming they are legit, so:

• either they support the service through other sources of revenue (e.g. advertising).
• their margins on other calls (e.g. to mobiles) are enough to cover free call volumes.
• or a backbone carrier is giving them an inducement to market in this way, and is bearing the cost of termination itself, with the expectation that its own volumes will cover costs.

VoIP Threat Taxonomy

This VoIP Security Threat Taxonomy aims to define the many potential security threats to VoIP deployments, services, and end users. Part of the challenge of devising effective VoIP security protections requires first identifying these threats in the first place. Voipsa's overall goal of this project is to help ground VoIP security awareness in the industry, press, and general public. Meanwhile Skype has let an external expert review its security.

Skype's registered users

Trends like this make you wonder how many of Skype's registered users are real and how much speculation has occurred.

Skype Advertising

Ebay floated the idea of "Skype advertising" this week which comes as no surprise. If it brings down the cost of SkypeOut then Hop255 is supportive. Meanwhile the SkypeJournal has an interesting post on a user who changed their skype user name to the reflect the car they want to sell.

BT Fusion VoIP Cell Phone

BT plans to start selling combo WiFi/Cell phones in 2006. Plans call for 20 different models to be made available.

Skype Adapters

Skype adapters, to plug regular phones into USB ports, are getting less expensive. This Macworld article describes the CUPhone adpater.The US$39 adapter works with Macs, Windows and Linux computers. Meanwhile Australia's Harvey Norman chain of stores is following the UK Dixons by offering prepackaged VoIP to users. Harvey Norman's base-level package will offer unmetered local and national calls for AU$0.099 and calls to mobiles for AU$0.289 per minute, with calls to other users free. In the US GoRemote added Skype to its product range this week further challenging mobile telcos.  Not sure VoIP dating holds the appeal of the traditional model.