Why should telephone service bought from your ISP be any more expensive than a one time charge for fancy microphone or inexpensive camcorder? Otherwise isn't the customer being billing twice for the same service(VOip)?
Hasn't Voice transmission over the Internet been built in to the Internet and has been since its very early days (ARPANET)? Isn't this the reason the phone companies have been buying up major ISP's (and sometimes vice versa)? They are aware that if they don't, someday soon there business might go the way of the Encyclopedia - on a couple of CDs. John Doe customer can still use a directory service, which could be kept on a CD but fiber optic /tcp-ip packets have millions of times the capacity of copper wire and that seems to be increasing every year as the technology for splitting bandwidth improves every year.
Haven't phone company lobbyists been wining and dining the FCC and Congress to give them some legal/regulatory cover so the masses won't see their business is more like the Emperor's New Clothes.... a business that collects at least $50 a month from every household could be reduced to collecting $15 a year for an updated Directory CD.
Could some one report here on the capability of the various versions of the freebie software Microsoft calls Netmeeting?
cheers Bob
cheers Bob