Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

The great dot-com boom, a pot full of lies filled and fuelled by
companies like Enron, Citigroup and other Wall Street associates,
Optical Fiber innovators and greedy scientists like Gururaj Desh, Star
Telecom Analysts like Jack Grubman together brought down the entire
nations economy giving hard time for the conservative and federal
reserve guard, Greenspan.

In the aftermath of Dot.Com bust, the Big 3 of Internet emerged, Yahoo,
Ebay and AOL. Cisco, Sun, Amazon, MSN and others existed but their
business models were not too consumer centric and they only tried hard
to survive growth. A new Stanford born baby was already conceiving and
came to limelight in 2001. Yes you got it right, Google. With it's
powerful Search technology it replaced AOL to join the Big 3. Google
focused on web-services technologies, unveiled new model of business
with its cool web based applications like gmail and google maps.

It is always said that many of us have herd mentality. So when Google
unveiled their Google Talk, the Redmond company which has already lost
its focus announced the buy-out of Teleo (teleo.com). The telecom and
VoIP bug has now bitten eBay. According to Bloomberg, it is willing to
pay a whopping $3 Billion
(http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aLvNorCTFLZM&refer=us
). So is eBay willing to pay so much just for the subscribers it has?
What about Yahoo integrated instant messaging and VoIP based services
it offers?

These Telecom analysts are all set to ruin the recovery in the IT
world, which came back in the real form of web-services. Don't
forget, Skype is a big hype. Not every customer will pay you for the
low quality service that Skype offers.

The entry cost for Skype like services are very low. Any company with a
million dollar in its treasury and a good negotiator across the table
can use much of open source tools and build such a service. Where are
the customers? In my experience, between Google Talk and Yahoo!, the
former got better customer rating because of the clarity compared with
Yahoo!. But Google has 1/100th the number of users compared to Yahoo!
So lesser the number of customers better the quality. I think the VoIP
market will evolve as a fragmented market with at least 2 service
providers for every small town and more than a dozen providers for
large cities.

I only hope someone will save eBay from shelling out couple of billions
for a useless services as this. I will not immediately jump to VoIP
unless they come up to the quality of fixed line Telco's otherwise, I
can never conduct my business with lost words in-between deals. Maybe
eBay and Skype officials must negotiate using Skype VoIP to know what
eBay is paying for and what Skype is offering.

<<All can never be said>>