That brings me to that classic line in the Monty Python film of the same name. It's during the "Dead Collector" scene. You remember -- the guy with the pushcart going door-to-door, shouting "bring out yer dead." Then a man comes out with another man slung over his shoulder and pays the Dead Collector his ninepence to take the body away. Of course, we next hear the body speak up, proclaiming "I'm not dead," and we all know how the rest of that scene goes.

This sure reminds me a lot of VoIP in 2008. The best-known names in VoIP -- Skype (News - Alert) and Vonage -- have not gone away, much to many people's surprise. As things kept going from bad to worse with Vonage throughout 2008, they're still with us. It may not be more than a faint pulse, but the telcos have not knocked them out entirely, and those 2 million subscribers have got to be worth something to somebody -- don't they?
[Read Jon's full post]

I'm not sure how completely I agree with Jon. I like his turn of phrase - It may not be more than a faint pulse, but the telcos have not knocked them out entirely.Ok, so I agree the VoIP players haven't been completely knocked out, but I'm not sure I'd call it a faint pulse. I'd say there's enough brain activity on the comatose patient that the doctors haven't pulled the plug, but VoIP technology isn't the darling we all thought it would be. It's just transport. It's infrastructure. It's just another protocol that is quite mainstream today. It isn't innovative and new. And it never will be again.

Jon lists a bunch of companies he thinks will make VoIP more interesting. I'd say that they make unified communications and voice services more interesting, but I think it's time to soften the focus on VoIP completely. It's not a magic wand and the successful comanies among those Jon listed are far more focused on service delivery than on an VoIP aspect of what they do.

I think 2009 is a good time to take VoIP out of our vocabulary and focus on service delivery - real, valuable service delivery.

Companies that talk about VoIP and protocols and SIP trunking and bits and bytes are pretty well assured medicority at best and failure at worst in the year ahead.

While I agree with Jon that the future looks bright, I think talking about VoIP is like smearing Vaseline on a window. The view gets very distorted. Let's focus on real services in 2009 and let the vague talk of protocols slip into the past. It's where the road to grwoth in unified communications lies.