Broadband is now in 50 million U.S. households and is spreading at a 50% annual clip, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. On the job, 75% of U.S. workers have a broadband connection. At the same time, VoIP technology has improved enough to entice every major U.S. cable-TV company to offer some sort of phone service to their customers.
Nearly 8 million Web surfers have downloaded software from Skype, a free Internet calling network. Skype has built a peer-to-peer community around a high-quality VoIP application that's easy to use. The latest version even works well over fast dial-up connections.
All of the major instant-messenger software programs including America Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger now boast voice capabilities. And software companies that are building more secure corporate versions of instant messaging have also rolled audio communications into their products.
[Source: Business Week]
Comments