Convergence
PingTel supports Earthlink's Vling VoIP service
PingTel's suppport of Earthlink's Vling VoIP service may well be an important way for VoIP services to gain popularity
Open source PBX vendor PingTel is making inroads in the network of service provider Earthlink, supporting the ISP's new Vling VoIP service.
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The service is free to Earthlink customers and anybody else who wants to download the software from the Earthlink Web site.
People with the Vling client software on an Internet connected machine can make a call to anyone else with a SIP phone or softphone connected to the Internet.
Earthlink hopes it can make money on these people by enticing them to buy other services, such as terminating calls to phones on the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN). After giving them a limited number of free PSTN connections, Earthlink hopes customers like the service enough to buy more minutes.
Vling also ties in to instant messaging and e-mail. So Earthlink customers can take advantage of Vling's SIP presence feature - letting customers alert a server whether they are available via IM, e-mail or phone - making them as accessible or inaccessible as possible based on personal preference.
This follows the trend of AOL, Google and Yahoo adding free voice to their messaging service as a way to lead customers in to for-pay services.
This may well be an important way for VoIP services to gain popularity. End users will get a sense of what VoIP in combination with other forms of messaging means for staying in touch or staying out of touch just as much they want to. This familiarity with the technology will likely bring it informally into corporate settings, much as IM, cell phones and Wi-Fi did.
As a side note, it's interesting to see open source code underpinning this new service. It is a grassroots-developed technology attempting to create a grassroots-desired service.
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