VoIP will be worth €12bn in Europe by 2010

As many as 32 million workers in Europe will be using voice over IP (VoIP) within five years, according to a report from analyst firm Analysys.

In that same time period, spending on VoIP systems and services is set to rise too, by more than 17 per cent each year to reach €12bn in western Europe.

Privacy Guru Locks Down VOIP

First there was PGP e-mail. Then there was PGPfone for modems. Now Phil Zimmermann, creator of the wildly popular Pretty Good Privacy e-mail encryption program, is debuting his new project, which he hopes will do for internet phone calls what PGP did for e-mail.

Zimmermann has developed a prototype program for encrypting voice over internet protocol, or VOIP, which he will announce at the BlackHat security conference in Las Vegas this week.

phonegnome buzz

it seems that the launch of phonegnome generated quite a stir all over the blogosphere. most of them, including the manufacturer (or should i say service provider), claim that it's a custom built appliance while it really is an off-the-shelf sipura SPA-3000 with a nice web based hosted management interface and some added services. the amped mind seems to be the only one with a correct analysis. i'm not saying it isn't clever, i'm just saying it's not a new product, but a new service which can easily be cloned with readily available open source software and some scripting magic.

world top voip providers

russel shaw points us to a list of the largest voip providers in the world, divided by country, region and provider. number one appears to be skype, with 5 300 000 users. There are 3 more other european providers in the top ten, mainly in france: free (600 000), neuf (297 000) and italy: fastweb (528 000).

Vodafone takes the fight to VoIP

Vodafone is responding aggressively to the rise of VoIP by launching a low cost, flat rate phone service of its own, using capacity on its 3G network. Echoing similar moves by its US joint venture Verizon Wireless, Vodafone’s plan reflects the main defense that cellcos have against the non-3G operators that seek to steal their voice markets using voice over Wi-Fi or, in future, WiMAX.

gizmo project

aswath has a nice overview of gizmo project a sip based softphone similar to skype. it looks very promising, if only it wasn't locked to sipphone, an itsp founded by mp3.com and linspire founder michael robertson.

Eurobites: VOIP's Hot

The inevitable is finally happening on the mainland of Europe – incumbent carriers are starting to offer widely available VOIP services that cannibalize their precious, traditional, circuit-switched voice revenues.

The time, it seems, has finally come when Europe's major operators (outside Scandinavia, where everything happens in advance) have realized that if they don't offer voice-over-broadband services, there's a queue of competitors with a host of attractively priced alternative packages just waiting to snatch their customers