Some City Governments Shifting to VoIP Phone Systems Experience Severe Growing Pains

Many city governments are finding that there are a lot of advantages to VoIP phone systems, primarily cost savings. In tough times such as these, with so many cities declaring bankruptcy, that's a particularly salient point in favor of civil government adopting VoIP PBX systems.

Skype: Microsoft Purchase Introduces Changes

Yesterday, we tweeted about Colocation America's examination of VoIP provider websites, and their conclusion that the 5 top ranked VoIP providers in the business were:

Or, I'd Like to Make a Local Call... to Poland

Most people are just beginning to wrap their heads around the concept of VoIP. I imagine their heads would explode if they learned about the iNum, which is essentially a country code for the Internet. Yes, that's right, a country code for the vast no man's land that is the Internet.

League Dissolves After WPS, magicJack Owner Reach Agreement

After a protracted legal debate between Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) and magicJack owner Dan Borislow, the WPS has officially folded. Borislow's 2011 lawsuit aimed at preventing the league from terminating his ownership rights — following several violations, fines, and other penalties — resulted in the league suspending play for a year while the issue played out in the courts.

New Rule Requires Notification of Service Outages

In what surely seems a case of "too little, too late" to Phone Power customers who weathered the May 2nd service disruption, the FCC has finalized rules requiring VoIP providers to report service outages.

The FBI has listed VoIP as one of the new technologies it's desperately trying to keep pace with, and has petitioned the industry to allow backdoor access to spy on Americans who might be up to no good.

The "power" in Phone Power was missing on Wednesday, as the VoIP phone service provider suddenly lost connectivity. Phone Power customers were unable to make calls or contact the VoIP service provider, whose website was also down.

Luckily, the residential phone service has also tapped into the "power" (nyuk, nyuk, nyuk) of the Social Web — namely microblogging — and was able to get the word out via Twitter, posting this note about their status:

The Hype for Skype

The Intertubes are ablaze with rumblings (and ramblings) that Microsoft's Skype division might be planning a significant VoIP counter-attack to Google Voice, and more specifically Google+ Hango

Congratulations! If you're reading this, you're probably an early adopter of VoIP phone service, at least in the US. Consider yourself one of the few, the proud, the adventurous.