16 May 2007

Perhaps a future Ph.D. candidate will write a dissertation tracking the evolution of VoIP. If he or she does, 2007 may be seen as a pivotal year during which the providers began to build upon initial gains.

A lot of press has been generated by Verizon's victory over Vonage in a patent infringement suit. While there is no way to spin this as anything but bad news for Vonage, it is unlikely that the decision will slow the growth of VoIP itself. If anything, it will realign the pecking order, perhaps providing the telcos with more power and accelerating the decline of the standalone VoIP companies that already were under stress.

That Ph.D. candidate will see that in 2007, several other significant events occurred. In general, VoIP offered by cable television operators is having a fine time. More specific news came this week from two powerful companies, Wal-Mart and Microsoft.