First principle of infrastructure realignment: anything wired that's not already on the internet will move there.
This is especially true regarding VOIP. One sign that a technology is poised to "cross the chasm" to mass-market acceptance is an emerging interest on the part of incumbent technology providers—in this case, the local and long distance phone companies—in "helping" the new technology through "improved" regulation intended to "protect the public." That VOIP has shown up on these folks' verizon, er, horizon, proves the technology is finally ready for prime time.

VOIP obstacles of the past, such as quirky connections and marginal voice quality, have largely been overcome, while the cost advantage (versus conventional phone service) remains compelling. Multi-office firms, especially multi-nationals, have already begun deploying VOIP over their inter-office wide area networks (WANs). As the handset hardware becomes more backward-compatible with "conventional" phones, and the "dialing" software grows more streamlined, VOIP will expand from WANs to "outside calling."

There's a delicious irony here. Early data networking piggybacked on infrastructure designed for circuit-switched voice communication. As the backbone infrastructure evolved into an all-digital, packet-switched network, data traffic outstripped voice traffic. Now, via VOIP, voice networking will close the circle, piggybacking on what has become a data-centric backbone infrastructure.
JL

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