VOIP: the Future is Now

Youve probably heard the story of a young man who designed
a new computer operating system, and was turned down by IBM
for the first rights. That would be Bill Gates, of course.
And did you know that when Marconi, the inventor of Radio,
offered the rights to that new technology to the Italian
Government in 1894, they turned him down? You see, the new
device was only capable of sending a signal a short distance
at that time, and was eclipsed by the more popular
telephone. No one though it would amount to anything.
Of course today, Microsoft is, well, Microsoft. And Wireless
Radio technology has spawned everything from Television to
Cellular phones, and is still changing the way we
communicate and do business over 100 years later.
These are examples of Disruptive Technologies. Wikipedia
defines disruptive technologies as:
"A disruptive technology is a new technological innovation,
product, or service that eventually overturns the existing
dominant technology in the market, despite the fact that the
disruptive technology is both radically different from the
leading technology and that it often initially performs
worse than the leading technology according to existing
measures of performance. A disruptive technology comes to
dominate an existing market by either filling a role in a
new market that the older technology could not fill (as more
expensive, lower capacity but smaller-sized hard disks did
for newly developed notebook computers in the 1980s) or by
successively moving up-market through performance
improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents
(as digital photography has come to replace film
photography)".
A thing to note is that disruptive technologies are not
disruptive to customers, and often take a long time before
they are significantly disruptive to other service providers
or manufacturers, so they are often difficult to recognize.
Indeed, as studies have shown, it is quite common for
incumbent companies to ignore disruptive technologies, since
they often compare badly to existing approaches, and the
initial markets for a disruptive technology are often very
small compared to the main existing market for the incumbent
technology.
Even if a disruptive technology is recognized, existing
businesses are often reluctant to take advantage of it,
since it would involve competing with their existing (and
more profitable) technological approach.
This situation exists today with VOIP Communications
Technology. VOIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol,
and is rapidly overtaking the traditional Voice Market.
Several years ago, when most Internet Connections were Dial-
Up, this technology didnt stand a chance against
established phone services. However, with the Worldwide
proliferation today of High-Speed wired and wireless
networks (note: another use of Radio technology), this
obstacle is being rapidly eroded.