[IP] voip and Japan

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dan Gillmor <dgillmor@sjmercury.com>
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 05:38:55 -0700
To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Fyi

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6041583.htm

When Manako Matsumoto, a Japanese homemaker, makes a phone call to her
parents, her voice travels through the phone company's lines for a portion
of the call. But she doesn't pay the normal per-minute charges.

That's because she uses an Internet telephone, as do her parents. And so do
more than 2 million other people in Japan. They are customers of the world's
largest consumer-level deployment of ``voice over Internet Protocol'' (VoIP)
technology, which converts voices into data packets that are transmitted
over the Internet and reconstituted as sound on the other side.

While Japan is leading the pack in this emerging service, there's little
doubt that VoIP is taking off globally. According to Cisco Systems, one of
the major players in the field, sales of VoIP equipment are growing at
better than 35 percent a year.

The transition is going relatively slowly in the United States, at least so
far, but it is inevitable.

Two factors make VoIP virtually unstoppable: the continuing evolution of
communications technology and cost.


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