VoIP

So a court decides that your entire business model is based on a technology that infringes on another company’s patents. What do you do?

Well, if your Vonage and the other company is Verizon, apparently you seek a retrial. It’s not unusual for defendants to seek a retrial in addition to appealing. Usually there’s not much chance of getting the new trial, but this time Vonage is hoping a recent Supreme Court ruling regarding obvious patents will help the company make its case.

Vonage has asked the Appeals Court considering its case to halt the appeals process and send the case back to a lower court for a new trial. Vonage’s lawyers are arguing that the jury in the first trial were weighing the evidence based on a rigid definition of patent law. Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling means that the definition may have been too rigid.

While the courts have allowed Vonage to continue operations during the appeals process, the company hasn’t had much good news in recent months. A retrial could rescue Vonage from the brink of death.

Want to call your mom on Mother’s day, but you’ve spent so much money on your blazing fast computer and high-speed internet connection that you can’t afford the long distance bill? Skype and Intel want to help.

Intel is sponsoring a day of free “global calling” over Skype. By global, they mean you can place the call from anywhere in the world, but you have to make your SkyeOut call to a phone number in the U.S. or Canada.

Normally, these calls would cost about $.02 per minute unless you have a Skype Unlimited plan, which runs $30 per year.

Of course, you don’t have to use your free minutes to call your mom on May 13th, but if you don’t, there’s the risk that she’ll hop on the internet and call you first. And that’ll just feel weird. Next think you know, she’ll be checking out your MySpace page and forwarding you emails about Viagra.

[via Engadget]

Skype has released a beta of version 2.2 for Windows Mobile. The biggest news is that you can now run Skype on Windows Mobile Smartphones. Other new features include enhancements for the home screen such as status and notice of missed calls, chat messages and voicemails. There’s support for Proxy servers, and for a number of Pocket PC devices that had previously been unable to run Skype for Windows Mobile.

And of course, you also get all the basic features available in Skype’s other mobile clients, including Skype to Skype calling, SkypeOut VoIP calling from your mobile device to telephone lines, Skypein (telephone to Skype) calling, voicemail and call forwarding.

The photo is courtesy of Dave Zatz, who installed the beta on his PPC-6700.

Hullo looks very interesting. It’s a VoIP service described as a “personal manager that will change the way you stay in touch.” What sets Hullo apart from the likes of Skype or Gizmo is the way it can integrate your Windows-based “softphone,” your cell phone, and your land line(s). How does it do that? When you set up Hullo, you enter your other phones’ numbers, and then when someone calls you, Hullo will route the call as you please–if you’re not at the computer, it can ring your home phone, then your cell, and so on. Somewhat more interestingly, you can set up different rules for different friends, so for example your best friend could be routed right to your cell phone, whereas your parents could be sent to voicemail. Not that you’d want to do that. Hullo also has a cool “Handoff” feature that will let you switch a call from one device to another, e.g. if you’re talking on the computer and have to leave the house, you can seamlessly transfer the call to your cell phone. Hullo is currently in beta and all calls to North America are free.

[Via Alec Saunders]

You know, there may be something to this VoIP thing after all. According to a new report from IDC, the number of VoIP subscribers in the U.S. will quadruple by 2010. In other words, the number of current subscribers which totals a little over 10 million will grow to 44 million in less than four years.

What makes this so interesting is that it’s not just the Vonages, TomatoVines, and Packet8s (among others) that will benefit from this boom. The report indicates that services like Skype and Gizmo (among others), which you can download from the Web very easily and in just a few minutes, will realize significant growth as well. If you have the wherewithal to download a VoIP application on your computer and have a decent headset, you’re ready to roll.

The number one reason why VoIP is expected to grow so much is very simple–economics. People are beginning to understand that they can take advantage of a broadband internet connection and potentially save big bucks on their phone bills. Obviously, the technology is not perfect (if your broaband connection goes down, no phone service), but it seems that more people will be willing to put up with small incoveniences in order to save money.

What remains surprising to me is that the traditional landline providers aren’t putting up more of a fight to retain their customers and keep them from switching to VoIP. When I switched to Vonage a few months back, I was almost shocked that I never got any type of communication from my phone provider (Verizon) with any incentives to keep me as a customer. Maybe they figured there weren’t enough people making the switch for them to get that concerned about it.

With predicted growth as mentioned above. the landline providers may want to change their tune quickly.