US consumer VOIP usage increases with Vonage leading the way

According to a study conducted by Telephia, VoIP penetration as a home phone service solution is slowly gaining traction within U.S. households, reveals Telephia, the leading provider of performance measurement information to the converging communications and mobile industries.Overall penetration for VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) increased to 3.5 percent or nearly 3.9 million households in January 2006, up from 2.9 percent in June 2005. Vonage led the VoIP market, which includes all pure-play VoIP companies and providers who actively promote their VoIP service as Internet telephony. Vonage secured a 47.5 percent market share or nearly 1.9 million households in January 2006, up from a 40 percent share in June 2005.
Read about the released study at Telephia.....
Here is a sample from the study;
Company......................................Market Share....Households
Vonage...........................................47.5%.......1,861000
Skype............................................11.8%.........463000
AT&T Call Vantage................................ 5.6%.........218000
Verizon Voice Wing................................5.0%.........196000
Google............................................2.5%..........97000
8x8 (Packet8).....................................1.7%..........67000
Other VoIP Providers (excluding cable companies) 25.9%.......1,013000
Source: Telephia EPCO Survey, January 2006

San Francisco picks Google for its Wireless!

San Francisco on Wednesday chose the high-tech team of Google and EarthLink to bring free, wireless Internet access to virtually everyone in the city, possibly by the end of the year, repoerts SF Chronicle.
This is music to mu ears, as I spend most of my days in San Francisco I would love to have contineous internet connection. Hurrah for Google!
For its part, Google, in Mountain View, intends to provide the free, so-called Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) access. The service it proposes would be faster than dial-up but slower than a typical broadband connection.
In its joint bid, Earthlink plans to offer speedier access, but for a fee. No price has been set, but EarthLink plans to charge around $20 a month in other cities where it is negotiating Wi-Fi contracts, including in Philadelphia and Anaheim.
Next on San Francisco's to-do list is for the city's technology department to negotiate the contract with Google and EarthLink, a process that can take several months. If no deal is reached, the city can turn to the second-place bidder.

After a contract is agreed upon, the issue goes to the Board of Supervisors and various city departments for permitting.

It remains to be seen whether residents will use the Wi-Fi system as a replacement for their wire-based Internet connections. Early fears by the mayor that the telecommunications industry would fight the project by filing lawsuits have yet to materialize.

Click to call on Craigslist! But not from Skype

TGLO, the VoIP division of theglobe.com, announced today the availability of its tglophone for users of Craigslist. Users of social classifieds such as Craigslist will now have a powerful communication tool allowing them to talk one on one with a potential buyer or seller.
If you are a Craigslist user, visit TGLO and get the tglophone. Once installed, when the user logins to Craigslist, their accounts will be enabled and a Phone icon will appear next to listing for click to call function.
But as we all know, Craigslist is partially owned by eBay and eBay owns Skype, the king of consumer Voip (IP Telephony). Then why is the TGLO? I would have expected Skype to do the job when I saw the headline on the businesswire. May be Skype is only good at choking networks!

NTT Docomo releses Digital tv Cell phones

Japan on Saturday began to watch digital television broadcasts on mobile telephones, in a highly anticipated service that could lead to a new genre of TV programmes.
Mobile operators have lined up agreements with television networks to develop the service. NTT DoCoMo has tied up with Nippon Television and Fuji Television. DoCoMo's main rival, KDDI, AU, has forged a partnership with TV Asahi.
Japan is a frontrunner in the new technology, popularly known as ‘One Seg,’ after ‘One Segment.
Japan's mobile TV service is not the world's first South Korea, Britain and several other nations offer a similar service, although with different technologies. Mobile users in some parts of the United States can also tap into digital broadcasts.
But the new service in Japan, which is free, will potentially reach the broadest market yet through the country's terrestrial digital broadcast system, which relays images through the air via TV towers, not satellites.

It also uses broadcasting air waves, rather than an Internet connection, to relay streaming video.