AOL heeds the call of VoIP
AOL is getting into the Net telephony game, launching a new service that will 
AIM Phoneline would offer a free phone number, a feature the company hopes will make the service stand out among competitors including Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger, all of which also offer voice services.
To make outgoing calls, users will need to upgrade to a paid service, at $14.95 per month. Will the VoIP offerings be enough to win people over? Bloggers were unsure.
Blog community response:
"Reputation, mash-ups with IM, and free access. Welcome to the Voice 2.0 world."
--Alec Saunders .LOG
"Given that AOL is suddenly betting on AIM as the core of their new strategy (at least this week), they probably figured they needed to offer some sort of VoIP offering. Probably cost a lot less than eBay paid for Skype, though."
--Techdirt
"But unlike Yahoo, AOL has to turn around a listing ship, it's AIM platform, in order to make VoIP over IM into something bigger. Yahoo also has the added advantage of a giant telco partner, which is marketing Yahoo Messenger with Voice."
--IP & Democracy
Margaret is news editor for CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. She also oversees the CNET Blog Network. E-mail Margaret. 
