Voice 2.0

People are able to get value from the phone even when they can’t answer it, through voicemail, caller ID, etc. Calls can become collaborative with 3-way-calling, conference calling, etc.

Early glimmerings can been seen with the invention of voicemail in the 1970s, a function primarily built to serve business customers at first.

VOIP and the advent of low cost long-distance and international calling, including video calling, breathes new life into the telecommunications industry.  Skype enables innovation by developers on their platform, and at the same time carriers are offering features like three-way-calling, ringbacks, and caller ID.  The telephony world is still a closed system, accessible only to domain experts familiar with building applications for specific frameworks.  The market is still fundamentally dominated by the carriers