Yahoo to offer phone calls from regular phones
What’s not to like about this? Yahoo is expanding its reach in the fast-growing Internet calling market, offering a service that will allow people to make and receive low-cost Internet calls to and from regular phones.
Here’s our story in the Merc. People will also be able to purchase a phone number with which to receive calls. The service comes with a free voicemail box. Although the calls will not be free, they will be extraordinarily inexpensive — a penny a minute to anywhere in the United States and less than 2 cents a minute to more than 30 countries, including China, Japan and Sweden.
Yikes. What does this mean for Skype/Vonage?
UPDATE: Andy Abramson talks about the Skype implications and much more at his VoIP Watch blog.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
