One of my colleagues alerted me to a very interesting piece of technology, Wireless IP Flip-phone. It’s becoming more and more clear that traditional telcos are in BIG trouble because VOIP is a killer application, a traditional telco killer.

A great question is “Who will win the telco sweepstakes over the next five years?” I don’t know, but some of the contenders are Skype (e-Bay), Lingo, and Vonage.

How do I know it’s a killer app? The parent test. My father in particular, is technology averse. He’s never met electronic technology that he really likes or that he’d really consider, gasp, spending money on. However, he has VOIP phone service now. Why? The service quality meets his expectation and the cost is much lower than traditional telcos. Does he know he’s using VOIP? Nope. Does he care? Nope. He just wants it to be cheap and he just wants it to work.

Back to the wireless flip phone. It’ll be a long time (if ever) there is sufficient coverage to make this a replacement for mobile phones, but I can definitely see standing in a hotel lobby in Portugal at a wifi hotspot using it to phone home……