Google Voice changes landscape of Internet telephony

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March 19, 2009, 08:35 AM —  The Industry Standard — 

Last week's announcement of Google Voice was a shot across bow of the telecommunications industry. While Verizon and other carriers will experience pricing pressure on some of the add-on services that they give customers, companies that provide Internet-based voice-over-IP (VOIP) may be most threatened by Google Voice, which will let users make calls within the U.S. at no cost, and international calls at an inexpensive rate.

Take Jajah, an Internet telephone service that recently scored nearly US$2.8 million in a round of funding. Jajah uses VOIP to connect landlines and mobile phones at a low cost.

Investor and entrepreneur Paul Kedrosky predicts Google will have the same impact on Internet telephony as the company has had on search engines.

While Jajah's investors may be optimistic, Google's entrance means "there's not too much landscape left in terms of universal telephony," he told The Industry Standard.

Kedrosky believes that Jajah's best asset is its grasp over certain geographic regions in Asia. As an existing player, they have a chance to keep the market they have. "The challenge is you're trying to arbitrage ever cheaper calling rates," Kedrosky said.

Still, he thinks Google will prevail.

"It's going to be very hard to get venture funding in this area now," he said. "It would be a mistake to say it's because it's Google. They've failed many times, but this is incredibly well done."

» posted by ITworld staff

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Comments

It's a threat only if the call quality improves

As someone who has been lucky enough to be a Grand Central beta customer, my only comment is that call quality is so-so, especially when using their web call feature to create a "two-leg" call and one of those legs terminates in a VoIP number. Grand Central / Google Voice has many helpful features, but call quality is only OK from my experience.
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Where Google Chrome security fails: the password
I heard mention that the Chrome OS will have some sort of encryption available a la bitlocker. If it's possible to encrypt personal data using another password or key, then it may have potential for very secure data.... And Ubuntu has an 'encrypt home directory' option, perhaps google should follow suit.
- Dann

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