The softphone market is growing along with VoIP, but it's still young. There are roughly 200 million fixed phone lines in the United States, but only 2 million VoIP customers.
Internet companies such as Yahoo, Google, America Online and EarthLink have already dipped their toes into the market. Last spring, Yahoo added improved VoIP calling to its Yahoo Messenger. In the summer, EarthLink launched the beta of its Vling Internet calling service. Google last month debuted Google Talk. And last week, AOL announced it would be offering its VoIP service called TotalTalk.
AOL's TotalTalk will essentially let people replace their traditional landlines. It has advanced communication features, such as unified voice, e-mail and instant messaging, and call-management capabilities such as call waiting and caller ID. It even lets people make and receive calls on a home phone line from anywhere users have access to AIM.
Softphones have become popular in corporate networks, especially among road warriors who travel for business. Softphone clients are sold as part of a larger corporate IP telephony solution from companies such as Cisco Systems, Avaya, Siemens and Nortel Networks.
The consumer market, as is often the case, could be next. But before softphones can really become widely deployed, the technology will have to be accessible to more devices than just a laptop.
"People don't always want to boot up their computer and put their headset on to make a phone call," said Stephen Howe, vice president of voice for EarthLink.
In the next six months, EarthLink plans to make its softphone client compatible with operating systems other than Microsoft. Users will be able to download it to devices running Java, Apple Computer's OS or wireless operating systems.
Consumer electronics makers also are working on devices that have enough memory and processing capability to handle softphone clients. Hewlett-Packard's iPaq handheld, for example, can accommodate softphones. And a Dublin, Ireland-based company called Cicero Networks makes a softphone that also handles calls over both cellular and Wi-Fi networks.
EarthLink is currently testing a free VoIP service that connects customers to VoIP phones using an open-source technology from a small company called PingTel. EarthLink's Vling service only allows users to call people on the Vling network. Like Skype before it, with its SkypeOut service, EarthLink hopes customers will be willing to pay for public switched telephone network connections.
But Vling and other VoIP services from portal providers are more than just voice. Customers can also connect to e-mail and instant messaging. And more than a few companies hope there's a gadget market to go with them.
"There's a huge market for small devices that give you access to information you need," CounterPath's Bruk predicted.
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