Articles by Kevin Werbach
Tip-Toeing on Top of VOIP?
Beware of incumbents bearing gifts. Local phone giant SBC says its TipTop service, which it is rolling out across its 13-state territory, is just a new option to make life easier for VOIP companies. Yet that's not how those...
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Hail to the VOIP?
Next week, as you might have heard, Americans will go to the polls. Voice over IP hasn't exactly been a major wedge issue in the Presidential campaign. Nonetheless, the election could have a significant impact on the future of...
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Ensuring Internet Innovation
This may seem like the best of times for the broadband Internet. Yet there are ominous smoke signals coming out of Washington and several state capitals. For all the recent press coverage of broadband and voice over IP, there...
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VoIP and Internet Freedom
There's a secret factor in the remarkable success of Google and other online powerhouses like eBay, Amazon.com, and Apple's iTunes music store. It's also a key reason voice over IP promises to deliver so much innovation and cost savings...
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Not Your Parents' Phone System
Guess who is the biggest voice over IP service provider in the US? You probably said Vonage, which has roughly 200,000 paying customers. Wrong. There's another company with more than four times the subscribers delivering voice capability over broadband....
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Wiretapping and the Politics of Fear
The FCC just voted unanimously in favor of new obligations on voice over IP (VoIP) and broadband networks. Why the lack of outcry from opponents of regulation? The rules mandate backdoors for law enforcement to wiretap VoIP communications. Of...
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The VOIP Train Has Left the Station
There was a joke in Russia during the Gorbachev years, as the country pondered whether the Soviet Union could be reformed or was doomed to collapse. Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev are sitting in a train, when it grinds to...
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Will the FCC Let VOIP Flourish?
The 1996 Telecommunications Act was hailed as a dramatic update to the musty sixty-year Communications Act. With the worlds of communications and computing rapidly converging through a great digital migration, the World Wide Web taking off, and new technologies...
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Tune In, Turn On, Skype Out
Somewhere between Sweden, Estonia, and London, a small band of software developers is fomenting a revolution. Their product, Skype, has been downloaded fifteen million times worldwide in less than a year, without any marketing budget. It is provoking consternation
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Bad Signs on the Horizon
Will May 19, 2004 be a date that lives in infamy for VoIP proponents? Two ominous developments took place on that day. The New York Public Service Commission declared Vonage to be a regulated telephone company. Meanwhile, several key...
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