VOIP News

Hi everyone! I’m baaack, having been traveling the last few weeks, and haven’t had much time to keep the blog posts coming.

For those of you with deep VoIP experience and backgrounds, there are a bunch of new job opportunities with the 800 pound gorilla of the enterprise VoIP equipment space — Cisco Systems.

The company is presently looking for two VoIP marketing experts: there is a Senior Technical Marketing Engineer position open in Milpitas, CA, and a Product Manager position open in San Jose.

To protect the name (and email account of the recruiter), I’ll ask that interested parties contact me directly. I’ll review credentials and pass along those individuals that appear to be a good match.

I’m off to the VON show in San Jose, CA tomorrow morning, and I’m interested to see if there’s any truth behind Thomas Howe’s brave post today about why he’s not attending the event. I’ll be meeting with other technologists while I’m there, so I’m curious whether this position is shared by them.

For my part, I’m looking forward to shooting the breeze with my industry friends, making new friends, and (hopefully) discovering new innovative solutions and sussing out relevant industry trends.

Also, let me extend an invitation to those also attending the event to contact me if you’re interested in meeting up.

I knew I was onto something hot when I posted about this a short time ago.

Apparently my colleague Jon Arnold agrees, and has this much expanded analysis of the offer - and provides a well-deserved booster shot for the technology masterminds behind the scenes at DiamondWare.

Just when people started dissing voice mail, saying how they don’t check their messages all that often and you should just email them (or SMS or IM them) if you want them to get back to you — and this from people in the “voice” business!!! – along comes a company that helps to breathe new life into the space.

GotVoice — a company launched in 2003 but just coming out the gate with its service (it needed several years of development to make it so seamlessly transparent and easy to use — and it truly is) — has come up with a new free voice messaging service that allows consumers to manage their mobile, home and work voice messages online, from a single, unified web interface.

Actually, such changes have been afoot in the enterprise voice messaging space for some time now, thanks to the slow but steady burn under unified messaging technology. But I can’t tell you how many times in years past I’ve heard people say, “This is the Year of Unified Messaging!” — only to be quite underwhelmed by the offerings or the tepid adoption by the marketplace of even well-developed enterprise solutions. Problem was, businesses didn’t want to pay what the vendors were asking, and the benefits were a bit too fuzzy for many.

GotVoice, however, has the potential to popularize so-called unified messaging to the masses — and truly invigorate the market for all types of UM solutions — including those of the Enterprise ilk. The developers hail from RealNetworks, Microsoft, Starwave, AT&T, and Corbis, and really seem to have come up with an easy, yet elegant mash up of the Web and voice messaging.

The company’s “secret sauce” — a competitive advantage that will be hard for others to replicate in a short time — is that it spent four years learning how to seamlessly integrate with all major cell phone carriers, residential lines including those offered by cable and VoIP providers, and corporate voicemail systems – with no carrier or work-place involvement.

GotVoice combines the ease of email with voice messaging, and the company claims that it is the only messaging service that allows users to visually take control of their voicemail without requiring a new number, a forwarded call, or text messaging services.

In fact, the service doesn’t require users to make any changes whatsoever to their normal phone use. To provide the highest level of flexibility, GotVoice leaves messages on the original voicemail system, so users can check their voicemail as they always have, if they choose. Whether users opt to receive voicemail via email or at their personal GotVoice Web page, GotVoice enables them to easily send, receive, create and store all of their voice messages—in the same way they use email. There is no software to install and users don’t even need a phone to access messages.

According to GotVoice CEO Curt Blake, “Voicemail should be as simple to use as email, extending beyond the restrictive options currently available in today’s market. Consumers can now interact with voicemail in any manner they choose; sending, receiving, creating and storing messages on their terms. We believe our service sets the standard for voice messaging offerings, and clearly moves the industry in a direction where voice will be free from the historic restraints that have kept it locked between a pound and star key.”

GotVoice service highlights include:

Access Voicemail Anytime, Anywhere: Gone are the days of calling multiple phone numbers to retrieve messages. GotVoice checks multiple voicemail boxes, such as home, mobile and work boxes, up to 24 times a day, then delivers messages to a user’s email or makes them accessible at the user’s personal GotVoice Web page. Users can also create and send messages using their PC or phone. The service is especially useful when cell phone coverage is poor and users are unable to access messages due to signal loss.

Send, Receive and Create Voice Messages without a Phone: Cell phone battery dead? Hate to use more cell phone minutes to check messages? GotVoice allows users to send, receive, and create voice messages without the need for a phone. Users can create messages with their voice or use a quick text-to-speech feature.

Organize, Save, Forward : With a very simple user interface, GotVoice makes it easy to organize, save and forward important messages, just as with email. It’s easy to sort through important messages and forward them to multiple recipients all at once, without additional call forwarding charges.

Silent Sending: Need to return a call but don’t want to talk? Send it silently. GotVoice gives users the option of sending voice messages without causing the recipients phone to ring - great for late night messages, traveling in a different time zone, or moments when you just don’t want to talk.

One Message, Many Recipients: When the word needs to get out, whether it’s to 10 or 200 contacts, GotVoice can do it all at once. Simply record a message using your PC or phone, and distribute. This is a great feature for busy professionals, families and team coaches.

Personalization: GotVoice makes it easy to create personalized greetings and outgoing messages. Add your favorite MP3 music to your voicemail greeting, choose a custom celebrity voice greeting or select background tracks from an audio library.

The Fun Factor: GotVoice reminds users that voicemail can also be fun. Create your own message by recording your voice over your own music. Users can also forward favorite or funny voicemails to friends, while preserving precious messages from loved ones.

Loyal Blog Readers: Please enjoy this sneak peek at my upcoming Mind Share 2.0 column (more like a mini-whitepaper) — co-authored by Cbeyond CTO Chris Gatch — that will be running in the April issue of Internet Telephony magazine:

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Managed Services Providers: Delivering on the Promise of High-Value Services



As the IP communications industry continues to evolve and mature, an array of new companies offering highly reliable and robust new products and services have made their way to market, providing users with an uncommon wealth of new productivity enhancing communications capabilities at extremely competitive prices.

Foremost among these new entrants to the marketplace are a breed of companies commonly referred to as Managed Services Providers, or MSPs. These MSPs represent a special type of service provider that leverages new Internet technologies to combine the best of Web service and network service models to deliver a whole new class of hosted services to users, and also represent a new genre of investment opportunity to Wall Street.

MSPs typically provide a unique bundling of various hosted voice and data communications services and applications, often coupled with quality of service guarantees, robust security measures and Web-based administrative features. But what exactly is a managed services provider, and what differentiates an MSP from a Web services and network services company?

 

The Two Types of Integration



Service providers establish their unique identity through integration – using process and technology to make distinct systems work together for the benefit of their customers.

 

When one examines the concept of integration with respect to an IP-based services provider, there are really two distinct types of integration to consider: network integration and application integration. In fact, the types of integration that are practiced in large-part determines whether a provider is a network services operator, Web services provider, or an MSP.

The matrix represented in Figure I to the left illustrates the differentiation between these two types of integration as well as the progression of derived value as the degree of integration increases across the two planes.

For example, a basic html-based website represented in the lower left-hand quadrant functions rather autonomously and displays little or no integration with other network resources or other applications running on a network.

As integration with other network resources increases, such as in the upper left-hand quadrant, services such as POTs, Fax-to-Email and other network integration-based services are enabled.

It can be said that if a service provider is high in network integration, but doesn’t pursue application integration, then this provider fits into the Network Service Provider paradigm.

For example, a Web hosting company rates high in network integration: In practice, they’re abstracting infrastructure for their customers, but they don’t really integrate with anybody else. In effect, they outsource the hardware function of running a Web site on behalf of their subscribers.

With respect to a high-degree of application integration as represented by the lower right-hand quadrant, Web-based companies like Ebay and Yahoo! are prime examples. In these cases, it can be said that if a service provider is high in application integration, but low in network integration, then it fits into the Web Services paradigm.

With respect to an MSP, the utilization of both types of integration is a prime differentiator that distinguishes it from a Web services or Network Services provider. In fact, a managed services provider combines both planes of integration, which allows it to provide a number of higher-value services such as CRM and unified messaging – services that rely on the integration of both networks and applications.

In order to fit into this MSP paradigm, it’s not enough for a provider to have a high degree of network integration, because that would still qualify it as a network services provider, and it’s not enough to have a high degree of Web integration – a true MSP has to exhibit both attributes.

The fact that everything is coming down to a common denominator of IP allows a network to support an array of applications in an integrated fashion, and this integration is happening on the information layer as well. Indeed, since most everything now rides over IP, the constraints that affected the types of integration one would have wanted between various applications and network services are rapidly disappearing.

Key Attributes of a Managed Service

Now that we’ve defined an MSP as implementing a high degree of both network and application integration, let’s try to tackle the question about how an MSP must reach beyond integration to create high-value managed services.

We suggest that an MSP delivers new value to users by offering a unique combination of integration, and personalization. An application that exhibits personalization stores personal user data, their preferences relative to the service, and it may even allow them to customize the service itself to meet their specific requirements.

The matrix represented in Figure I to the left illustrates the differentiation between these two types of integration as well as the progression of derived value as the degree of integration increases across the two planes.

For example, a basic html-based website represented in the lower left-hand quadrant functions rather autonomously and displays little or no integration with other network resources or other applications running on a network.

As integration with other network resources increases, such as in the upper left-hand quadrant, services such as POTs, Fax-to-Email and other network integration-based services are enabled.

It can be said that if a service provider is high in network integration, but doesn’t pursue application integration, then this provider fits into the Network Service Provider paradigm.

For example, a Web hosting company rates high in network integration: In practice, they’re abstracting infrastructure for their customers, but they don’t really integrate with anybody else. In effect, they outsource the hardware function of running a Web site on behalf of their subscribers.

With respect to a high-degree of application integration as represented by the lower right-hand quadrant, Web-based companies like Ebay and Yahoo! are prime examples. In these cases, it can be said that if a service provider is high in application integration, but low in network integration, then it fits into the Web Services paradigm.

With respect to an MSP, the utilization of both types of integration is a prime differentiator that distinguishes it from a Web services or Network Services provider. In fact, a managed services provider combines both planes of integration, which allows it to provide a number of higher-value services such as CRM and unified messaging – services that rely on the integration of both networks and applications.

In order to fit into this MSP paradigm, it’s not enough for a provider to have a high degree of network integration, because that would still qualify it as a network services provider, and it’s not enough to have a high degree of Web integration – a true MSP has to exhibit both attributes.

The fact that everything is coming down to a common denominator of IP allows a network to support an array of applications in an integrated fashion, and this integration is happening on the information layer as well. Indeed, since most everything now rides over IP, the constraints that affected the types of integration one would have wanted between various applications and network services are rapidly disappearing.

Key Attributes of a Managed Service

Now that we’ve defined an MSP as implementing a high degree of both network and application integration, let’s try to tackle the question about how an MSP must reach beyond integration to create high-value managed services.

We suggest that an MSP delivers new value to users by offering a unique combination of integration, and personalization. An application that exhibits personalization stores personal user data, their preferences relative to the service, and it may even allow them to customize the service itself to meet their specific requirements.

The matrix in Figure 2 at left illustrates the progression of service value as the concentration of personalization and integration increases.

For example, early Web-based applications were basically autonomous pursuits – they allowed a user to perform various basic functions such as a database lookup or numeric calculation such as that found in lease rate estimators found on automotive websites.

Other websites pursued complex machine-to-machine integration with other services and data sources and simplified the number of steps involved to solve a complex task.

For example, a site that provides background checks may integrate data from a wide variety of sources, thereby decreasing the time necessary for a thorough background check.

Further up the food chain, some websites began to add additional value by allowing personalization. A good example of such a site is Delta.com, which allows users to tailor individual choices based on their stored profiles – in this case selecting flight itineraries, seating and food preferences, payment methods, etc. Delta.com in effect personalizes user information and enables a transaction — namely the booking of a flight — to occur.

As we follow the progression of value to the upper right hand quadrant, we see that some companies have succeeded in combining both personalization and integration to deliver higher value services to their users.

A great example of such a site is Salesforce.com. This unique service outsources the infrastructure demand of managing a CRM system, provides intuitive Web-based configuration of the platform, and extends their platform with a network of almost 400 Web-based partners under their AppExchange partner program.

Now you may be asking, what does this have to do with VoIP? We stated that personalization includes not only personalized data and preferences, but control of the service by a user. An MSP provides the ability for users to conduct transactions – in terms of allowing users to subscribe/unsubscribe to services, and enable/disable various service features and functions.

 In effect, users are provided with a high degree of control regarding what services and features get delivered to them and what network resources they have access to – but the upshot is that this control not only includes access to information but it also includes customization of the service itself, including real time communications services.

The key point we are trying to make here is that the same degree of personalization and customization that is occurring in the Web services realm is being enabled in the real-time communications services realm, and it’s at the junction of both that MSPs are leading the charge.

Web Information and IP Communications Mashups — The Network as a Web Service

With the wealth of new Web 2.0 and IP communications technologies currently available, there is an incredibly rich opportunity for MSPs to combine a variety of services to create even more valuable and meaningful “super” services for users. By employing Web 2.0 access to information and application resources, while simultaneously relying on communications networks as a key resource, MSPs are making telephony (voice and video) an integral part of the mash-up phenomenon (see sidebar “Web 2.0 Technology Toolbox for Managed Services”.

In fact, we believe that the combination of network-based information and applications with other content and applications makes the managed services opportunity almost limitless.

For example, XML by itself is an invaluable Web 2.0 tool as it provides an easy mechanism to describe and label data being exchanged between two Web-based entities. In effect, it offers up a standard format for presenting Web-based content. Furthermore, there are numerous examples of standardized XML schema that allow one to easily digest more common forms of data such as contacts (vCard-XML), secure identity (SAML) BLOGS (Atom), etc.

There are many examples of useful information available in the standard XML formats including Yahoo! maps, e- Bay auctions, professional sports teams game calendars, etc.

Beyond the revolution in content and data, we believe service provider networks will eventually be accessible via web services APIs. This includes wireline and wireless networks, as the progression of VoIP standards promises to make the network an accessible resource of higher programming languages. Today, VXML is a good example where basic call and IVR functions can be accessed on a service provider network using a basic markup language.

Many other service provider networks already support call control or other resource manipulation through RPC type APIs. Some modern platforms like the popular Broadsoft Broadworks Application Server allow subscription to call information and manipulation of calls via a Web Services API.

While examples in this arena are not as plentiful as content examples, one need only look at some interesting developments like Voxeo’s IVR services, Cbeyond’s SIP trunking and converged fixed-mobile services or AOL’s plan to expose network call control to developers to gain an appreciation of the potential that exists for the managed services industry..

Conclusion

We believe that if a provider is simply building on the information of other providers, they’re a Web services company, not a true MSP. For example, in our view an eBay is a great Web Services company, but not an MSP. AT&T is a network service provider of tremendous scale, but it is without an application strategy, and therefore not an MSP.

To truly qualify as an MSP, a provider must provide both network and application integration, and in most cases will extend broad capabilities of service configuration and personalization to the users of the service. This demanding distinction makes MSPs a rare breed among service providers.

The good news is we are truly on the leading edge of a golden era of high-value managed services. The unique combinations of technological building blocks and new combinations of services – the mash up if you will – has created a new platform for the creation of new services and new capabilities. While the current list of companies one should consider a true MSP is limited, expect to see this change in a dramatic way in coming years.

Technology Toolbox for Managed Services



A host of new technologies are making new types of integration and improved user interfaces possible. These technologies present a ripe opportunity for managed services providers because they provide a programmatic way to use the resources of the underlying network (for example, like SIP does for the network integration plane.)

It’s not essential for a company to use all of these technologies or only these technologies to qualify as an MSP, but from our perspective these are the most interesting developments that are fueling innovation.

IP

Stands for Internet Protocol. A common network protocol that makes the convergence of disparate media (voice, video and data) on a single network infrastructure and the combination of many services into a single managed services bundle possible. It is the “lingua franca” of today’s network infrastructures.

SIP

Stands for Session Initiation Protocol. A simple, text-based protocol for IP communications session establishment that makes the creation and enhancement of voice, video, IM, gaming and other session-oriented communications possible.

XML

Stands for Extensible Markup Language. A simple and extensible means of communicating information between various Web-based applications and services – a standard way to describe information that’s exchanged between Web services. XML is extremely powerful because everything from calendar information to contacts to emails to documents can be appropriately labeled in an XML schema.



APP

Stands for the Atom Publishing Protocol. A replacement for Really Simple Syndication (RSS), APP is a simple HTTP-based protocol that allows one service to subscribe to another and automatically receives new, relevant information when available.

REST

Stands for Representational State Transfer. An emerging new tool, an architectural principal that represents the various states of an application in a standard URL format that can and often is combined with XML. This technology represents a replacement for an older generation of “APIs” that were based on remote procedure calls (RPC). Consider an e-mail platform based on REST: every e-mail on the server is represented as a unique URL with the content set forth in a defined XML schema. REST makes the use of that information very easy in other enhanced services.

AJAX

Stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. AJAX is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent of AJAX is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is meant to increase the web page’s interactivity, speed, and usability.

AJAX brings it all together with a whole new set of capabilities that allows an MSP to produce desktop quality web interfaces.

(About Chris Gatch)

Chris Gatch is the CTO and a founder of Cbeyond (NASDAQ: CBEY), a small business focused managed services provider that started in 1999 and is now publicly traded on the NASDAQ. Chris is a contributor to the industry effort to standardize SIP Trunking and serves as an editor of the SIPconnect technical specification published by the SIP Forum. He has served on the Service Provider Board of the International Packet Communications Consortium (IPCC), and he presently serves on the Board of the SIP Forum.

Josh Lowenstein, over at the Webware blog from cnet.com, recently posted about a new paid-by-the-minute service from Skype called Skype Prime.

According to the post, Skype Prime is aimed at consultants and other professionals that need to monetize their phone time. Such users can set their own per-minute rates that get charged to the caller. Skype Prime takes 30 percent of the fees to pay for the service, and users can set up as many types of paid-for calls as they want, with short descriptions and custom pricing.

Each type of call gets listed on the users Skype profile for others to see, and there are two options for pricing: a one-time fee, or charging by the minute. Setting up the service requires signing up with PayPal, which handles the fees.

FYI, if you’re interested in signing up for this new service, you need to use the latest Windows-based Skype client, which apparently is not the version that is available for download off of Skype’s home page. You need to dig a bit to get to the right one.

I just received a troubling message, sent by Pandora CEO Tim Westergren to the Pandora user community, about the fact that the Copyright Royalty Board has just dramatically increased the fees Internet radio sites must pay to the record labels. 

If this is left unchanged, the resulting financial burden would effectively stymie — and potentially kill off — all Internet radio sites, including Pandora.

According to Tim, “The RIAA has convinced the Copyright Royalty Board federal committee to pass rates that will kill internet radio. For now, we are continuing to operate Pandora in the belief that rationality will return.”

“Online radio has brought millions of music-lovers back into music radio, and has opened up a world of opportunity and promotion for thousands of musicians - both obscure and well known. Pandora is already paying millions of dollars annually in licensing fees (fees not paid by traditional radio stations), and while we are striving hard to build a sustainable business, we have yet to make a profit–even at the old rates.”

There is a congressional hearing on this matter taking place tomorrow afternoon in Washington, DC., so we’ll see if anything reasonable transpires. Also, here’s a link to a review of the situation by an attorney dealing with the issue.

Greg Galitzine just blogged about the recent FCC order “reaffirming” that wholesale providers of telecommunications services are entitled to interconnection and related items under sections 251(a) and (b) of the Communications Act.

 

As Greg reports, this order means that carriers that sell wholesale VoIP and other services are entitled to interconnect and exchange traffic with local exchange carriers (“LECs”).

However, according to leading telecom law firm Womble Carlyle, there are a number of areas and unanswered questions that leave the door wide open for confusion and potential abuse.

Namely:

1. Asymmetrical Intercarrier Compensation. Wholesale carriers (and not their customers) are obligated to pay intercarrier compensation to incumbent LECs. The FCC makes no mention of any incumbent LEC obligation to compensate wholesale carriers for traffic termination. The FCC expressly punted on addressing intercarrier compensation for VoIP traffic under

section 251(b)(5).

2. Limited Interconnection Rights. Although the order establishes an interconnection requirement under section 251(a), no interconnection finding is made under section 251(c). Under 251(c), competitors are entitled to interconnection: (i) at any technically feasible point; (ii) on terms and conditions that are just, reasonable and nondiscriminatory; and (iii) at cost-based rates. 251(a) interconnection – provided for in the order – contains none of these safeguards. Expect special access pricing and terms.

3. Broad Definition of Wholesale. The FCC clarified that the statutory classification of a wholesaler’s customer – as either an “information service” or “telecommunication service” – is irrelevant to a wholesaler’s ability to interconnect with a LEC under sections 251(a) and (b).

4. Action on Delegated Authority. Because the Bureau acted on delegated authority, parties may not appeal any aspect of the order directly to circuit court. Rather, parties must file either (but not both) an “application for review” or a “petition for reconsideration.” An application for review would put matters before the full Commission. A petition for reconsideration would go to the Bureau, which may refer such a petition to the full Commission.

Well, it’s been a rather disappointing couple of weeks in Vistaland, as it seems one disappointment (read “performance issue”) after another rears it’s ugly head.

I’ve been trolling the message boards to get a sense of Vista-related problems, and it seems most fall into the following categories:

1. Devices (printers, scanners, etc.) that won’t work due to lack of updated drivers.

2. Applications that don’t run because they haven’t been upgraded (for example, I tried to run Second  Life, to no avail — as of now, it won’t run on Vista).

3. Big performance hits to PCs that have been upgraded from XP to Vista. Apparently installing Vista on top of XP produces extra processes or some such situation that causes new core 2 systems to crawl. It seems that this isn’t a problem on virgin Vista systems. If I had  purchased an XP-based screamer, that ran  laps around older PCs, and then started behaving like an ancient 486 system after installing Vista, I’d probably be livid.

 

4. Trouble with all the application nesting — many tools and apps that were right out in the open in XP are buried behind multiple screens in Vista. The reorg of the interface takes getting used to, to say the least. At least there’s a way to set the interface to trusty XP mode — but since the major guts of the upgrade was supposed to be in the GUI, that’s definitely taking several steps back.

And here’s a new one for the books  — as I haven’t seen it described anywhere yet. Internet Explorer has been crashing repeatedly and the problem has gotten so bad I now defer all browsing to Firefox, which works like a charm. Not only is Firefox noticeably faster than IE,  but it  hasn’t crashed once (as opposed to dozens and dozens of times for IE).

At some point soon, when I have an afternoon to kill, I’m going to be calling MSoft to find out what might be the problem here, and how to fix it, but this situation is rather disconcerting, to say the least.

Due to all the issues above, there are numerous reports of people being forced to buy a Vista system, then after getting it into their hands proceed to wipe the OS off the hard drive and install XP instead. Microsoft should be ashamed and taken to task for releasing such a half-baked product into the marketplace.

A number of defenders have placed blame on device manufacturers and third-party app vendors for not working hard enough to make their products Vista-ready, but I believe that MS is equally to blame, if not more. In fact, there have been reports of MS withholding necessary code and support to developers as they were trying to update their products.

I smell a revolt brewing, as the frustration level of new Vista users builds to a breaking point.

My recommendation, if you have a fairly new PC or laptop that is up to date with the necessary XP  patches, DO NOT UPGRADE TO VISTA. If you’re in the market for a new system, decide very carefully if you’re willing to buy a system that probably won’t run everything you need it to, and you’re ok being a guinea pig for Vista debugging.

Much better to wait out the necessary patches and updates that hopefully will be forthcoming over the next year.

The popular, virtual reality site “Second Life”, run by Linden Labs, will shortly unveil a new limited service beta trial in which they will give users the option of chatting up other avatars with voice instead of text.

Prior to this announcement, Second Life users wanting to communicate with one another have had two basic choices: text chat (either personal or in a group setting) or the use of third-party voice applications like Skype.

Linden Labs  has teamed up with VoIP technology partners Vivox and DiamondWare to engineer the service, which goes live on March 6 for a limited group of users. By the end of the month, Linden Labs hopes to extend the feature to all Second Life inhabitants.

Second Life’s new integrated voice chat feature will offer a group mode that lets users hear voice conversations in their immediate proximity, and personal and regular group voice chat, where users don’t need to be near each other to have a conversation.

After There.com added voice chat to its site in late 2003, many Second Life users have been clamoring for the same feature.  And after seeing users add Skype and other applications like TeamSpeak or Ventrilo into the site, Linden Labs apparently got serious about development.

The plan is to initially provide voice free of charge during the beta. Down the road, Linden Labs is considering limiting the offering to mainland property owners and island owners who pay a $295 monthly maintenance fee, and charging users living on the wrong side of the virtual train tracks an additional fee or making them upgrade to the current plan.

It’s clear the site is at the very early stages of incorporating real-time voice chat, and it will be interesting to see what emerges from the user community and how people incorporate it into their virtual business and personal lives.

Since Second Life has become a bona fide marketplace, where buy/sell transactions occur on a constant basis — and we’re talking real money made here, not Monopoly currency — I’m particularly interested to see what intrepid developers come up with.

How about virtual phone companies, including virtual payphone, mobile and landline services. Or community-wide news and radio “channels”.

Just as long as it’s not some virtual telemarketing business that calls me during virtual dinnertime…