Microsoft (MSFT) kicked the rumor mill into high gear in August when it acquired San Francisco-based startup Teleo, a provider of PC-to-PC phone calling. Was Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates plotting a foray into the booming market for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP)? Would the software giant be going toe-to-toe with such VoIP providers as Vonage and Verizon Communications (VZ)? Advertisement

More like Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO). Far from aiming to displace your mother’s phone company, Microsoft wants to harness Teleo’s PC-to-phone calling capabilities in a bid to kick-start growth at its MSN Web business.

Microsoft has yet to make public its plans for Teleo, but BusinessWeek Online has learned that the software maker plans to weave Teleo’s bells and whistles into a number of applications, such as Hotmail and instant messaging. Microsoft also hopes to integrate VoIP into its new paid-search platform, which is being rolled out worldwide, as well as a planned classified-ad service

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In “Global VOIP Has Arrived; Just Not As Expected!” tech research firm In-Stat throws out another crystal ball prediction that total VoIP subscribers worldwide, 16 million in 2005, will balloon to over 55 million in 2009.

But despite an impressive 62 percent year-over-year subscriber growth rate in 2005, InStat officials say, “few consumers have ever heard of the term ‘VoIP.’” In other words, considerable room for market growth here, friends.

“Competition in broadband access services is the key driving force behind VoIP market development,” says Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. “In addition, multiple waves of new entrants, ranging from broadband ISPs and cable MSOs, to Google and eBay will play significant roles.”

Everyone’s competing to see who can be the most bullish on VoIP. A couple weeks ago Kevin Mitchell, principal analyst of Infonetics Research and author of a report on VoIP’s rosy prospects, said “VoIP subscriber growth is skyrocketing right along with revenue growth: we’re forecasting triple-digit growth from 2005 to 2006, with 6 million new subscribers a year every year from 2006 to 2008, when there will be over 24 million.”

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With little fanfare and with even less concern, Western Union delivered its last-ever telegram on Friday, January 27.

Although I usually use this space to write about converging and emerging broadband communications technologies, this is a good place and time for a eulogy.

Long before there was an Internet, email, or even phones, there was the telegraph, and telegrams.

One might say that the telegram, and the telegraphs they were sent over, constituted the world’s first mechanized, real-time communications infrastructure.

On May, 24, 1844 the first telegram ever was sent by Samuel L. Morse. Sent from Washington to Baltimore, the message read, “what hath God wrought.”
Over the next few decades, telegraphs invented by Morse and his assistant, Alfred Vail, where deployed around the nation and around the world. The first Transatlantic Telegraph cable was succesfully completed on July 27, 1866.

In 1892, Thomas Edison was awarded a patent for the first two-way telegraph.

Fast forward through the next century. Telegrams were the primary means of non-verbal, instant communications across distances. Newspapers were named “telegram” and “telegraph.” Foreign correspondents described the ravages of battle. Students off at college wired their parents with news of their safe arrival. Invitations were delivered, deals were struck, people fell in and out of love. Geographically distant cousins sent their best wishes to wedding parties they could not attend.

Telegrams were always faster than letters.

Then, long-distance phone calls got cheaper. In what has to be the peak of irony, these calls became less expensive because of the breakup of a company with an initial that stood for “telegraph.” I am talking about AT&T, which in an incarnation that stood firm for most of the 20th century, had the formal corporate name of American Telephone & Telegraph.

Yet on January 27, the first Internet fell silent forever. Apparently there are still a couple of companies that will send telegrams as special promotions, but none that provide a regular telegram service such as Western Union did.
Sad, in a way, that although we know who sent the first telegram and what message it contained, we have no knowledge of who sent the last telegram ever, and the words therein.

I have an original saying that I think applies here.

Obscurity is the ultimate destiny of sustained irrelevance.

But rather than consign the telegram to the dustbin of history, let us remember telegrams and how they impacted our lives. For this example, I cite the lyrics to “Western Union,” the 1966 classic hit by The Five Americans:

Things went wrong today
Bad news came my way
I woke up to find
A wire that blew my mind

Western Union man
Bad news in his hand
Knocking at my door
Selling me the score

Fifteen cents a word to read
A telegram I didn’t need
Said she didn’t care no more
Think I’ll throw it on the floor

Got your cable just today
Killed my groove, I’ve got to say, hey
(…hey) Western Union

Da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da
Da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da

Da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da
Da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da

Now you’ve gone away and
How it’s sad to say you’ve gone
I remember what they said
Now I’m going out of my head

Telegram just had to say
You’ve learned your lesson all the way, hey

I’ll be on my way ’cause
There’s another girl for me
I’ll be sure of her and
Things’ll be as they were

Da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da

(Western Union, oh Western Union)

Oh, Western Union, indeed.

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Over on the Vonage Forum, there’s a thread from a Member named armresi who has been receiving a series of death-threat phone calls over his Vonage line.

Unfortunately, caller I.D. for all these calls reads “Anonymous.”

As a preventative measure, a fellow Vonage Forum Member named riddler recommends Caller ID Manager, a VoIP-compatible, $99.97 program from a company called Privacy Corps.

I’m just back from the Privacy Corps website where I learned that Caller ID Manager can:

1. Block anonymous and unidentified numbers, while allowing all others
2. Block up to 175 numbers, area codes or prefixes
3. Allow only callers you ‘Invite’ by name, number, or ‘Wildcard’ to ring your phone, and block others as you choose

You can also configure specific controls for individual numbers.
If I ever got threatened, I’d contact the police first. Then I’d consider a program such as Caller ID Manager.

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