VoIP - A Tower Of Babel?
from the fixing-the-mess dept
About a year ago, Jeff Pulver demonstrated Free World Dialup to me at his office. The call was crisp sounding, and it certainly was impressive. The problem, in my mind, was that you could only call other FWD users. That seemed pretty limiting. While there was a rapidly growing number of FWD subscribers, the last thing I needed was yet another ID for yet another communications medium. It appears that Jeff has come to the same conclusion. Admitting that he's helped to create a "VoIP Tower of Babel" he's now working to get the various VoIP providers to talk to one another. Of course, with the various systems in place, and widely varying policies, it's unclear if this will do any good. People are running to Vonage because it's a very clear phone replacement. FWD is not. It's a different beast altogether, and it takes a bit more explaining to understand why it might be useful.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Vonage
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rebuttal + FWD Now offers Toll Free Dialing to: US
Just so you know, as of yesterday, July 30th, FWD has reached 40,000 subscribers in over 150+ countries. This week we introduced the ability to place toll free calls (for free) to: the US, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Details regarding the re-introduction of a free phone call can be found: here. Hope to see you at Fall VON in Boston!
[ link to this | view in thread ]