Cutting the Phone Lines
August 7, 2009
Telephone companies have ruled the communications industry with an iron fist for more than 100 years. The Bell system held a monopoly on domestic telephone service until 1984, when a federal law finally busted the company into several competing companies including AT&T. Today, a few huge phone service providers continue to charge exorbitant fees for a basic service.
The advent of VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocal, represents a sea change in terms of the way we communicate. VoIP phone systems transfer analog audio into digital data that can be transmitted over the Internet. Free services such as Skype have harnessed this technology, allowing users to cut phone companies out of the loop entirely. The implications are enormous, and consumers are guaranteed to come out ahead.
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