The story of FWD inspired me
to investigate VOIP technology.
I registered an account and yes
it worked, and was indeed free !
VOIP - A brief history
1991 - Brian C. Wiles releases NetFone as a public domain program
- this uses digital compression to squeeze voice into a 32 Kb/s stream.
1994 - Free World Dialup (FWD), the first true VoIP business venture,
founded by Jeff Pulver, Brandon Lucas, and Izak Jenie
1996 - The Internet Engineering Task Force creates the SIP
(Session Initiation Protocol) which defines VOIP signalling and is modeled on http.
2003 - Skype (then called Sky Peer-to-Peer) was founded in Estonia.
in a year, it had 50 million users.
Jeff Pulver says "December 8th may in fact be the most memorable week
for the VoIP industry, ever, and this month, December, 2003 will be known in our
history as the month that consumer VoIP happened in the USA.
2004 - Federal Communications Commissioner Chair Michael Powel declared that VoIP
was an information service, not a phone service
2012 - hosted VoIP telephone services were growing at a rate of roughly 17% per year, while
SIP trunking saw an 83% growth from 2011-2012. By 2015 businesses were either transitioning to VOIP
or already had it installed.
2015 - AT&T petitioned the FCC to allow VoIP phone companies to discontinue the use of
copper wire in favor of fiber optic cables and IP switches.
2020 - The Coronavirus pandemic accelerated VoIP adoption.
