My friends in the North Carolina area have probably already seen that I was quoted in the local newspaper, this morning. The Charlotte News & Observer has an article that is written by John Murawski which discusses the mainstreaming of VoIP services.

The article was prompted by a company Bandwidth.com who recently signed an agreement with CompUSA to deliver VoIP service in their retail stores.

John’s article is certainly balanced with a a good smatteringof examples and lots of research which is evident in excerpts like this:

Southwest Durham Family Medicine switched to VOIP as a cheaper way of getting voice and data services from the same company, said David Brooks, manager of the six-employee medical practice. Brooks described the service quality as excellent.

"Sometimes it's so clear on the phone, there's no static, and people think the call's been dropped," Brooks said.

This particular statement is why some vendors actually put noise on the line intentionally so people don’t think the call has been dropped!

Here is my quote:

"This is another step in the mainstreaming of the VOIP market," said Rich Tehrani, editor and publisher of Internet Telephony magazine. "You're getting a virtual phone system."

What isn’t mentioned in the article is that Sylantro Systems is powering this hosted offering. Sylantro seems to be making some smart moves lately as they look to increase adoption of hosted communications solutions by companies everywhere.