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VOIP - Plan A & B

Plan A and Plan B are caricatures, of course. Vonage is experimenting with un-phone-like features like mailing out voicemail messages as audio file attachments, while Skype is talking about ways of interfacing with the traditional phone network. Nevertheless, the tension between the two plans is real: modification or replacement of the current phone system. The litmus test is emphasis -- Plan A emphasizes for-fee calls to ordinary telephones, with free computer-to-computer calls presented as a bonus, while Plan B emphasizes free calls as the main event. And much of how VoIP unfolds will have to do with regulations written in 2004.

Read Article @Shirky: VoIP - Plan A vs Plan B

Is regular telephony coming to an end soo, well soon could be something like a decade, not immediately, but for begining of end of a great era. But the phone companies will have to reinvent themselves and I guess they are going to establish themselves in braodband provision, which they are already doing anyway. Then provide products over broadband.