Dan Gillmor's on his annual teaching stint in Hong Kong, but he's still on the job for his newspaper in San Jose. Normally, this would entail enormous phone bills and patient hand-holding by email for Americans who've never dialled an overseas number in their life. But this time around, Dan's got a Voice-Over-IP box plugged into the Ethernet in his place in China and a phone plugged into that. This box is a portable phone-number: dial a number in San Jose, and it rings in Hong Kong (or wherever Dan has plugged it in). So all of Dan's communications with the home office are free. What's more, the long distance charges for US-Hong Kong on the service are only $0.05/minute, so Dan can simply forward his VoIP number to a Hong Kong prepaid mobile phone and take his San Jose number on the go with him throughout the city.
Companies around the world are already moving to VoIP in big numbers; now it's getting easy enough — and the quality is getting good enough — for individuals and families.
This shift is inexorable due to the nature of technological improvement. The main questions are a) how soon; and b) how the existing phone companies and regulatory agencies will deal with that reality.
