Phone Handset Calls Go A-Packeting

Just one day after news on SMS going over IP, we have David Pogue's column (reg. required) on the VoSky Call Center, a $60 gizmo that allows you to make Skype calls over your phone handset - and cell phone! Untethered from your computer now, we can make free calls over phones that have until now been the exclusive ouput device for telcos.

Disruption, disruption, disruption. The industry is shifting like an ice floe breaking up. Incumbents in all corners of media and communication will be pressed to bend and keep their feet on the ice even as it drifts apart. Atomization of content will help, allowing media firms to supply consumers with the types of information they want, when they want it. Broadening their mandate to include technology and its uses will help tmedia firms break out of the cap-in-hand position with respect to telcos, printers, internet service providers, and others who control their delivery channel (Google gets this; it has just won a bid in San Franciso with partner Earthlink to provide a wireless network). New business models will evolve, first audience and ad-driven and then, as has happened in other media historically, to subscription-based - but only when the market and products are mature enough to support them.

Have other ideas on how this might evolve? Comment here. Or send us an email. Or call us on Skype - on our computer, or on our phone or cell phone. Or...