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Google Voice changes landscape of Internet telephony

18.03.2009
Last week's was a shot across bow of the telecommunications industry. While Verizon and other carriers will experience pricing pressure on some of the add-on services that they give customers, companies that provide Internet-based voice-over-IP (VOIP) may be most threatened by , which will let users make calls within the U.S. at no cost, and international calls at an inexpensive rate.

Take Jajah, an Internet telephone service that in a round of funding. Jajah uses VOIP to connect landlines and mobile phones at a low cost.

Investor and entrepreneur predicts Google will have the same impact on Internet telephony as the company has had on search engines.

While Jajah's investors may be optimistic, Google's entrance means "there's not too much landscape left in terms of universal telephony," he told The Industry Standard.

Kedrosky believes that Jajah's best asset is its grasp over certain geographic regions in Asia. As an existing player, they have a chance to keep the market they have. "The challenge is you're trying to arbitrage ever cheaper calling rates," Kedrosky said.

Still, he thinks Google will prevail.