VOIP all the rage

Yesterday Yahoo announced that they're about to launch VOIP telephony services to rival Ebay's Skype. Today the UK's leading telecom company, BT, has also announced that they're going to beat Skype at their own game and get aggressive about their own VOIP service that they say will be even cheaper than Skype's, particularly for international calls.

So, as Skype draws closer to having 100M users of their almost free VOIP service, the rest of the world seems to have had enough and are chucking their all into VOIP services also. Expect all fixed line telco's worldwide to follow as well as all portal's and a bunch of major shopping and community/content sites as well. If VOIP makes sense for Ebay, it should make sense for Amazon as well.

But for BT it is a bold move and one that has to cannibalise their existing near monopoly and highly lucrative fixed line telphone business. They don't seem to have a choice though and the fact that Skype is head officed in London cannot help. So, they are justifying their VOIP cut-throat service by the fact that they will win more and more broadband business.

And next year, like so many other leading fixed line telco's, BT is launching video on demand. The next 12 months will be critical for them. And they neeed to swiftly learn how to become part media company as well battling against Sky, the BBC and new media powerhouse, NTL.