Voip Blog
The year of the voip
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
For the last couple of years, the dropping of that giant disco ball in Times Square has signaled not only the dawn of a brand new year, but also the start of prediction season. Specifically, predictions from wildly enthusiastic voip internet phone industry experts saying that this year, this year is THE ONE WHERE VOIP HITS IT BIG. [insert reverent pause] After a while, they start sounding suspiciously like the boy who cried wolf. Except last year? When they got all rabid about how voip was taking off...yeah, they were so. totally. right.
To the tune of 3.8 million new US voip subscribers in 2006. If you took all those new subscribers and laid them end to end...no, just kidding ;-) But seriously, that's a darn lot of people. Think of how much money they spent...and you know, if you start talking to people about why they made the switch, it seems like every single one of those voip minutes has a story behind it. Retired couples on fixed incomes who need to minimize those living expenses; divorced parents living far apart who don't want to worry about the phone bill while they're talking to the kids; college students away from home for the first time; families with members who are overseas.
People think of tech as something cold and inhuman, but I think you can't get much more human than voip. It touches people's lives, helping them achieve their goals, stay close to the people they love, live their lives the way they need to, and fosters our need for community.
Pretty amazing stuff. I predict that 2007 will be the year voip hits it bigger.
