Voice Over Internet Telephony (VOIP) is bound to fall victim to voice spam, a point that was proven when the University of Columbia was attacked last week. It is difficult to say whether the target was chosen due to lack of decent firewall policy or because of the fact that the co-author of the protocol that VOIP services (except skype) run on, Henning Schulzrinne, is a professor there. The attack left several unsolicited marketing messages on multiple phone extentions.
This furthers the notion that VOIP is on its way to becoming the next big target for spammers.
Convergence is what will make VOIP even more accessible and popular, even though it is holding back due to resellers failing to follow the market. According to Chris Tombs, a CEO at Timico, “Resellers are not making the most of the opportunities convergence offers when they should be. They are not moving with the market and this is going to have an effect on their business.”
Another question is whether Skype will be able to follow the trend. A concern was recently voiced that Skype, which has been free or very cheap, may be more expensive than traditional calls. This is because Three, the mobile phone operator, became the first to offer Skype on a traditional mobile handset, allowing users to make free calls to other users anywhere in the world.
