Facebook is about to roll out voice calling between Facebook users, directly from its smartphone apps. Hmmm...lemme see...back of the envelope calculations here.....Facebook has, roughly, one BILLION users. If Facebook enables voice calling, Facebook is about to become the largest phone company in the world.
What does this mean for communities? It means that one more service is moving very quickly to an all-IP platform and away from the antiquated landline network. Telephone is dying, and dying perhaps even faster than TV. Fast, cheap broadband is going to be the community economic development engine, and communities that can't support the emerging array of thousands of new IP-enabled niche services are going to wither. It's a replay of the interstate build out, except that every community can have an exist on the interstate, because broadband is cheaper than roads. It's cheaper than water lines. It's cheaper than sewer systems. And there is plenty of money for broadband; it's just that in communities today, all that money is being stuffed in envelopes every month as payments to the cable and telephone companies, and the money is being carried by the Postal Service out of the community and typically out of the state.
Link: http://www.macrumors.com/2013/01/03/facebook-updates-ios-app-with-voice-messages-testing-voip-calling-in-canada/