VON: Pulver Keynote Marks 10th Anniversary of VoIP

This year marks the 10th anniversary of VoIP. What started out as "a bottoms-up disruption" from innovators at small companies has grown into a multi-billion industry embraced by all the major players, observed Jeff Pulver, speaking at the opening of the VON event in Boston. The PSTN is not going away, said Pulver, it's just morphing into a multi-modal billing engine.
This year also marks the transition of VON from strictly a VoIP event into multi-faceted conference with a Video-on-the-Net component.



"We always kinda' thought video was an app, but Moore's Law finally makes it true, said Pulver, demonstrating high-quality streaming of movie trailer from Sony site and projected onto conference's big screen.



Pulver drew a clear distinction between TV-over-IP and IPTV. He sees IPTV as a great space to be in, but ultimately another scheme for empowering incumbent phone companies with fiber in the ground.



VON remains about disruptive technologies. Many people said the Internet was not good enough for telephony. It's now clear that the Internet is good enough for TV. Video shows on Net (vlogs) are proliferating and the studios are jumping in as well.



VON conference organizers expects to attract 10,000 visitors over the course of the event.

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