1) Spies

OK, that’s a bit exotic, but the earliest adopters of sending voice packets as data were intelligence agencies that were both testing it as a communication modality and also to send messages that could not be easily tapped. And now the NSA is openly adopting VoIP as part of their organizational efficiencies.

2) Carriers

Telecom companies were amongst the first to use VoIP. Anyone remember MCI? The early carriers had large portions of their voice networks traverse over the internet since it was one of the most cost effective ways to compete on local and national long distance rates. CLECs were also huge adopters of VoIP – since they competed mostly on price, they had to be.

3) Geeks

I still remember the programmable Pingtel SIP phones which cost $500 and looked oh-so-pretty. Now you can get feature-rich SIP phones from the likes of RingCentral for a fraction of that cost. My, how times have changed – but at least we got into the early part of Gordon Moore’s “chasm wave”.

4) Call Centers

Due to the sheer volume of calls they were making, call centers were amongst the first business verticals to really look into VoIP. Combined with this impetus was the tidal shift in that call centers were being moved to offshore making the need for efficient long distance termination a business necessity.

5) Gamers

XBOX Live users learned a long time ago the joy of trash-talking a complete stranger in a foreign country while playing Halo online. Oh come on, it’s only words. Besides, my excuse is that the 12 year old who consistently beats me plays Halo as a full-time job. I, meanwhile, have a blog to write.

Photo by emma*k