{"id":4067,"date":"2005-12-30T18:19:41","date_gmt":"2005-12-30T18:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/e-commerce\/voip-predictions.html"},"modified":"2005-12-30T18:19:41","modified_gmt":"2005-12-30T18:19:41","slug":"voip-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/technology\/voip-predictions.html","title":{"rendered":"VoIP Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"
Tom Keating finally got around to making his <\/font>Top VoIP predictions for 2006<\/font><\/a>. That\u2019s Tom for you\u2026 Always waiting till the last second \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t all VoIP related so let\u2019s just call them predictions. He also went back to last year\u2019s predictions and was honest enough to say where he was right and wrong. <\/p>\n

In his predictions there are some real gems and perhaps my favorite one is as follows:<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/span>6) <\/font>Microsoft<\/font><\/a> buys Level3<\/font><\/span><\/i><\/b> – Ok, you’re probably thinking this prediction is from way out in Left field, but hear me out. Level3 has been burning cash for awhile, had to restructure debt, etc. While many won’t touch Level3 with a 10-foot pole due to their outstanding debt, <\/font>Microsoft<\/font><\/a> has the deep pockets to be Level3’s knight in shining armor. Level3 is one of the largest termination providers if not the largest in the world. <\/font>Microsoft<\/font><\/a> has been itching to break into the VoIP space for years. If <\/font>Microsoft<\/font><\/a> owns Level3 they can offer free worldwide long-distance (or heavily discounted) to anyone that uses their Windows Live Messenger client to entice people away from <\/font>Skype<\/font><\/a> or the impending <\/font>Google<\/font><\/a> Gtalk threat. <\/font>Microsoft<\/font><\/a> needs to do something drastic if they are going to get into the VoIP game. Remember General Norman Schwarzkopf’s famous "left hook" into Iraq<\/place \/><\/country-region \/> that took the Iraqi army completely by surprise and is widely credited with shortening the war by 4 days? Well, <\/font>Microsoft<\/font><\/a> could pull a similar "left hook" that would leave <\/font>Google<\/font><\/a> and <\/font>Yahoo<\/font><\/a> scratching their heads saying, "Where the hell did that come from?"<\/p>\n

Further, <\/font>Microsoft<\/font><\/a> can leverage Windows Mobile 5.0 smart phones install a Windows Mobile<\/place \/> 5.0 compatible Windows Live Messenger client and then leverage inexpensive Level3 termination to offer price-competitive VoIP calling from Windows smart phones.
<\/font><\/span><\/i>
As Tom says, this would take the entire industry by surprise and would allow Microsoft to do lots of nifty things that competitors would be hard pressed to match. Another option of course is Google buying Level3. Google is really trying to build out its own network and it may realize at some point it is better to acquire than build. At least it\u2019s faster and may be cheaper.<\/font><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/font><\/span><\/div>\n

Here are my recent VoIP Predicitons<\/a>.<\/font><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Keating finally got around to making his Top VoIP predictions for 2006. That\u2019s Tom for you\u2026 Always waiting till the last second \ud83d\ude42 They aren\u2019t all VoIP related so let\u2019s just call them predictions. He also went back to last year\u2019s predictions and was honest enough to say where he was right and wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[171,172,189,118,191],"tags":[568,283,685,284,686,233,17,291],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}