VoIP and ENUM

Microsoft: Your Next Phone Company? -- I say NO

It's keeping mum, but the giant has already introduced software that could turn into the killer phone application
BW Online | March 2, 2004 | Microsoft: Your Next Phone Company?:

.....

EARLY WARNING? "The Pulver petition becomes important for the market when Microsoft pushes a voice product," say Blair Levin, an analyst with Legg Mason and former chief of staff at the FCC under William Kennard during the Clinton Presidency. "If you can turn each Windows PC into a voice device, you suddenly have a whole new phone network that never touches the public switched telephone."

.....

IF you can? -- You can already, it is there.

If you want to be called, just go to fwd.pulver.com, www.iptel.org or www.sipphone.com,
subscribe, download one of the free phone clients and you are set.

If you want to call some of these guys, just get their numbers, go to
www.myphonebooth.com
and call them from your browser (click-do-dial)
Or call any 1-800 freephone number.

If Myphonebooth is now in addition ENUM-enabled, which would just require you to enter a number in the international format +xxxxxxx, you could reach anybody which has his phone number in ENUM.

So the point is not

that Microsoft is the phone company

the point is

that the Internet is your phone network and if you are connected via broadband and have any device to attach, you are your own phone company. You may use Windows, a MAC, a LINUX device or even a WiFi-enabled mobile phone.

Period