A group of Internet pioneers, including Vint Cerf, has authored a paper critical of the FCC CALEA requirement for VoIP.  After outlining the considerable technical difficulties involved in implementing the FCC requirement, they also commented:
Voice over IP is the immediate target of the FBI’s CALEA efforts. The Internet architecture is rich and flexible, and VoIP is not the only real-time communication in which Internet users indulge. Current real-time applications include Instant Messaging, massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) — even music “jamming†sessions. IM and MMORPGs represent huge markets. These communication types fall under the wiretap laws, even if neither the FBI nor the FCC has currently sought to include them in the CALEA requirements.
Speaking to PC World, later, Sun Security Chief Whitfield Diffie said, “These things do not respect borders. It’s very hard to see how something of this kind can be done both effectively and securely.”
Worth a read.
Preston Gralla savages the Vonage IPO and the Skype acquisition in this post titled Skype and Vonage: Can You Hear the VoIP Bubble Bursting?. It’s hard to disagree with his assessment. Vonage closed at $9.60 on Friday, down from the $17 opening price a few weeks ago. Skype unveiled a series of highly expected, but not exactly earth shattering, announcements last week.
The hype around Vonage was an entirely cynical push to sell stock. Somewhere between inception and IPO, Vonage took a profound 90 degree turn and became a telephone company. Now, there are many prospering telco’s in the market today, but they’re not generating profits on their landline businesses. Growth and profits are coming from their wireless and internet access businesses. It’s highly unlikely that Vonage will ever turn a profit, given that they are a pure play landline company.
Skype, however, has much more promise than was exhibited at last weeks DevCon. It’s here that I differ substantially with Preston. The ecosystem of players that Skype is building has the potential to profoundly change the comms market, because for the first time you can actually treat a voice “network†as a platform. For some time, enterprise IT departments have been able to build sophisticated voice applications on their networks, because they have controlled them. With Skype, it can now be done on a public network.
