January 13, 2006
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. regulators plan to sell airwaves starting May 10 to provide communications services like high-speed Internet to U.S. air travelers.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it plans to auction airwaves now used by phones embedded in airplane seats. Those phones, operated by a Verizon Communications unit, are not used regularly because of the high cost.
The financially strapped airline industry could generate a new stream of revenue by partnering with companies wanting to offer high-speed Internet, known as broadband, or a cheaper on-board telephone service.
Verizon plans to bid in the sale so it can offer wireless broadband during flights, according to company officials. It could take about a year for Verizon to deploy if it wins a license, they said.
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That’s the D-122 KXT-41 Tone Dialer. It costs less than $6.
Why am I devoting service space to this product? Read on…
On the independently-owned and run Vonage Forum, I’ve run across a fascinating thread in which a user named Cozzman is trying to figure out if there’s a way to use his Vonage service with his rotary phone.
My first thought: I flashed back to the rotary dial phones of my childhood (longer ago than I care to state here), and then wondered why someone would want to use a futuristic technology such as VoIP with hardware you are more likely to find packed away in attics or offered on eBay than in day-to-day use.
Then, after reading Cozzman’s post, I got it. Just like some people still build radio-controlled antique cars, the challenge of marrying old and new technologies is the kick here.
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In this space, I’ve written frequently about how I view the coming battle for VoIP subscribers as one between the bundled service offerings of call providers with IM roots (Yahoo!, Google, AOL, MSN) and bundled offerings of cable companies traditional telephony service providers.
I have maintained, and still do, that the marketing juggernaut and pricing discounts that these channels will use to push their VoIP plans will put stand-alone, pure-play VoIP providers such as Vonage at a major disadvantage.
Well, Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron doesn’t think so. He doesn’t even sound worried.
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The backlash against Skype is gathering momentum with the announcement of a product that hunts for and aggressively blocks communication from the program.
Ipoque’s new add-on filter for the company’s PRX Traffic Manager PRX-250 system is another symptom of a change in attitude towards the ever-spreading VoIP client among some businesses.
Costs about $3,000
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