Cnet has a story about how businesses are grabbing onto Skype, the free telephone service that works over the Internet.
We're just at the beginning of the biggest change in telecommunications since voice telephone service became available 100 years ago.
One of the ways Skype is being used is by business travelers. Roaming charges, lack of cell coverage, and different standards for phones often makes it difficult to call back to the main office easily or without great expense.
If the home office staff and the business traveler have Skype accounts, all the busines traveler has to do is find a broadband connection (sometimes easier now than cellphone coverage) and make a call. Anywhere in the world.
The telephone companies are terrified of this. They don't really want broadband to get out to their customer base too quickly, because it will just accelerate the loss of their analog voice service cash cow.
What's next? In the next year or two, expect an incumbent telephone or cable provider to block certain kinds of services from traveling over their network. That's right, they can block Skype, Vonage, or any other kind of voice call if they think it is competing with their own services.
Just one more reason for community ownership of part of the network.