MCI and Microsoft have teamed up to offer a new VoIP service.

MCI Web Calling combines Microsoft’s PC-to-PC voice and instant messaging technologies with the global presence and stature of MCI in the telecommunications market – a force to be reckoned with by any measure.

Microsoft and MCI are currently testing the service as part of a Windows Live Messenger beta program, with subscriptions initially restricted to the US. However, it is expected that PC-to-phone calling services will be available in France, Germany, Spain, and the UK when the service goes live in 2006.

Unlike Skype, Microsoft is a staunch standards player where Internet telephony is concerned and is currently committed to the session initiation protocol (SIP). Microsoft is not alone in supporting SIP – vendors such as 3Com, AT&T, Cisco, Ericsson, IBM, Nokia, and Nortel also support this standard – and so 2006 will undoubtedly see Skype with a battle on its hands, even in the consumer market.

SIP is already an established favorite in the enterprise space and service provider market, but the consumer world is still pretty much wide open. To muddy the waters even further, there is another competing ‘standard’ called XMPP, which is favored by the likes of Google, Sun Microsystems, and Oracle, and so there is no immediate sign of convergence in sight. Of these three titans, only Google has indicated that it will support SIP signaling in the ‘near future’, and so end-users of VoIP systems will have to juggle several accounts to chat for free over the Internet with relatives, friends, and colleagues.

Service choice is something we usually take for granted these days – we do not have to worry about which email, telephone, or postal service provider our contact uses for example. Unfortunately the same is not true of most instant messaging (IM) and Internet telephony applications. No doubt interoperability will arrive one day, either in the form of a gateway, protocol converter, or multi-protocol client, but until it does, end-users will continue to flock to programs that ‘just work’ – no worries for Skype just yet then.

Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)