If consumers begin adopting VoIP, who's going to use a phone company, whether it's a Bell or a long-distance company? Indeed, Cerf, who created the TCP/IP protocol that defines online communication now spends a good part of his time focused on VoIP...
Users can call other Skype users for free, while connection to the telephone network and other services attracts a charge. For the internet to rival the telephone network it has to have an over-capacity to ensure that communication between two...
But in an unexpected twist, Senator Byron Dorgan persuaded the committee to adopt an amendment that permitted states to regulate VoIP services in two ways: levying taxes to pay for universal service and for compensating traditional telephone...
That means callers can avoid long-distance charges, regardless of the destination, provided both caller and receiver have the Skype software. Skype, by contrast, charges only when its users need to make a call that goes off the peer-to-peer network...
It is very likely that per-minute charging will continue to diminish in importance but charges there will always be. For years there has been no technical justification for steep premiums on long-distance telephone calls.
Given that VoIP applications such as Skype have no customer acquisition costs and no real cost for calls, "we cannot charge for phone calls in the future," Zennström said. We don't need to charge a lot," he said, because they have such low costs.
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