Summary
Jeff Pulver, inventor of making phone calls over the internet, hopes VoIP will one day replace traditional telephone systems, but doesn't know if such a thing will happen in his lifetime, Reuters reports.
Original source:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=8799682
Details
Jeff Pulver has a dream: That his invention a decade ago of making phone calls using the Internet will eventually be used by everyone and traditional phone networks and copper wires will be a thing of the past.
"Whether that will happen in my lifetime is another story but my hope is to basically enable people to be free -- to have the freedom to define what their communications experience is," Pulver said in an interview with Reuters during a visit to Israel, which he calls the birthplace of commercial use of Internet phone calling.
Pulver is a pioneer of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology and is a co-founder of fast growing VoIP provider, Vonage, as well as founder of a half-dozen other VoIP firms.
A number of competitors -- as well as many cable companies and large telcommunication firms -- have sprouted up around the United States and around the world as Internet voice services have become cheaper than traditional phone offerings, while quality and reliability continue to improve.
As a result, Pulver estimates there are some 9 million paying VoIP customers around the world -- 6 million of them in Asia -- and millions more with Skype, the Web site that allows for phone calls around the world for free to and from computers.
Pulver believes the industry is at a crossroads, with so much room for growth but a host of regulatory and financial issues confronting it.
"The last 125 years the telephone industry has replicated and replicated but now, the DNA has changed," he said.
Pulver said there is a huge market where a company like dominant phone company Bezeq Israel Telecom, for instance, could offer virtual Israeli phone numbers to its citizens living abroad using
VoIP.
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Wednesday, June 22, 2005
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