I am jumping on the skype (http://www.skype.com) bandwagon. Or, I should say that I jumped on it. The quality is very very good, much better than iChat, plus it can make good mac-to-pc or visa-versa calls. I am able to make calls to my family in the states (I am living in the Balkans where internet access isn't particularly fast) and the call quality is, most of the time, only slightly slighty worse than the land telephone. Not too mention its free whereas regular calls to the states are about $0.30 a minute.
The problem with Apple hopping into the VOIP arena is the competition - namely Cisco and Nortel.
It depends on how they decide to do it. Right now, they've made an elliptical entry by porting and bundling Asterisk, which seems to target SOHO and other smaller instutions primarily. In this case VOIP is just part of a larger package that's a value-add for their servers.
Nothing requires Apple to get into VOIP by offering a backbone, a phone, etc. They "got into" the home stereo market with Airport Express and AirTunes, which are simply bridges. They can "get into" VOIP simply by building a bridge to their technologies as well.
And if VOIP doesn't pan out, so what? Asterisk is free.
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Originally posted by Chagi
The problem with Apple hopping into the VOIP arena is the competition - namely Cisco and Nortel.
It depends on how they decide to do it. Right now, they've made an elliptical entry by porting and bundling Asterisk, which seems to target SOHO and other smaller instutions primarily. In this case VOIP is just part of a larger package that's a value-add for their servers.
Nothing requires Apple to get into VOIP by offering a backbone, a phone, etc. They "got into" the home stereo market with Airport Express and AirTunes, which are simply bridges. They can "get into" VOIP simply by building a bridge to their technologies as well.
And if VOIP doesn't pan out, so what? Asterisk is free.