Telepocalypse

Duck!

How often do you see this same drivel appearing in general business articles on VoIP:

Because VOIP services use public networks and software rather than a fixed circuit, the service is far less expensive to build and maintain than traditional phone systems.

Wrong, wrong, wrong and incorrect. It just ain't so. It's nothing to do with transmission cost or efficiency. Indeed, the software inside a traditional telephony switch is not much different in complexity than that inside a modern large router. Most of the effort goes into security and management, not packet or circuit routing. And on wireless, IP is hideously inefficient unless your network goes to great pains to strip down all the IP and MAC headers.

Nope, it's about bypassing the levies and tolls. It's about people and their control of economic resources. Packetization technology is a side show that happens to drive the change by naturally moving control to the edges. Ignore the efficiency canard. It's wrong and irrelevant.