VOIP is a product, not a service

"It took one hundred years between the time that fax was invented and people started asking “what’s your
fax number?” rather than “do you have a fax machine?” It took that long because of Metcalfe’s Law.
Fax machines can only talk to other fax machines and so there had to be lots of small networks set up
before there was any value in buying a single fax machine."

It didn't take one hundred years for the Fax machine to be widespread, it took very little.
There is an extremely well written article about it from Clay Shirky

"Zap Mail" have a look, I really love it

You could see in it also a very good forecast of the Future of VoIP.

As he says, what they didn't understand was that faxing was not a service, it was a product.

Exactly what VoIP is.
In spite of all the efforts to make it a service, like the old telephone system, VoIp is a product, it is an IP phone, and the infrastructures are already there, the Network is already there, it is called "Internet" and nobody should pay a further fee to have access to it.
The moment everybody will realize it (and believe me Metcalfe's law doesn't cover the sudden boom and the power of "Mouth to mouth") there won't be any more the need of a "service" to connect to the PSTN.

Clay Shirky has a great vision of the Market because he has a great vision of the human behaviour.

No computer, no mathematical law is able for the moment
(may be it will be someday, I do not want to put bounds to the artificial intelligence)to come to the same conclusions as a human brain, and also to understand the unpredictable of the human brain and consequently of the human behaviour...
But history tends to reapeat itself, because histroy is made by humans, and humans always repeat themselves..

Patrizia