Follow the money

It's pointless to complain about hype in the technology industry when it's hype that attracts investors, partners, potential buyers and, ultimately, customers.

But I think it's always wise to remember that today's hype is tomorrow's potential paycheck and that something else is paying today's rent. On that note, it was interesting to see how matter-of-fact VoIP has become, even as it is now transforming the voice communications business.

Voice has now been rendered merely an application in the IP portfolio, but moving this segment of the communications industry onto the IP backbone is having tremendous impact on every segment of the telecom industry and on customers. The cable industry's enormous success in selling VoIP is what has pressured the largest incumbents to push video out the door much more aggressively.

The business world's migration to VoIP is what will streamline corporate networks and enable new applications and productivity as well as new means of communication. Consumers' migration to VoIP will lower phone bills, particularly as once-expensive services such as voice mail and caller ID become a routine part of the mix.

VoIP is also a key component of fixed/mobile convergence, which has a real chance to bring sanity to a world seemingly gone mad with staying in touch with itself.

Yet VoIP is so beyond the hype stage that at its own seminal event, VON, it was upstaged by a new fascination with video on the Net.

There's nothing wrong with that — it's part of the technology circle of life. Mufasa himself, the great James Earl Jones, was once Verizon's best-known corporate spokesperson until he was displaced by a guy in funny glasses who traversed the U.S. checking on Verizon Wireless voice quality. But it's also important to learn from the VoIP experience as IP video looms large and ready to disrupt another existing market. And it's important to remember that it's usually only when the hype has passed that a technology or service begins to pay its dues.