Nowhere have I seen mention of VoIP anywhere in the billion or so words written so far about the potential effects of the so-called “Fiscal Cliff,” but indeed the VoIP industry does face a significant potential loss … in the range of $500 million or more … if the political horse trading goes the wrong way.

At stake is a program to transform the U.S. Army’s communications system from its current stone age POTS (plain old telephone service) technology to UC (Universal Communications) technology, the stuff on which VoIP runs, by 2016. The Army spent $131 million on that program in FY 2012, and is hoping to increase that amount to $142 million for FY 2013, although realistically the most it will get, according to most analysts and gurus, is the same as it got for FY 2012.

But that’s without taking into account the fiscal cliff, and its sequestration requirements. The UC program is part of a $13.3 billion “other procurement” line in the military budget which is where the most draconian cuts are expected to occur, at least $1.2 billion of them. And it’s all too easy to see some politician harping that the last thing the taxpayers need to pay for is a shiny new $500 million telephone system (that’s roughly the total amount to be spent preparing for Army-wide VoIP by 2016, given the annual run rate and anticipated size of various contract awards involved).

The irony of it all, as any business VoIP user is well aware, is that a pure VoIP system will save the Army, and thus taxpayers, far more than it costs to implement the UC system. In the medium to long term taxpayers will have to ante up far more money than if the investment in UC is made in the short term.

Meanwhile the VoIP industry, including hardware manufacturers, software vendors and carriers should be sitting on edge, and perhaps even lobbying their congressmen, before the loss of a huge amount of investment that will undoubtedly help fuel the continued growth and development of VoIP.

It’s hard for the average person to make much sense of the flood of news and pseudo-news flowing from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas each January, and this year has proven to be no exception. For those interested in VoIP phone service there’s the usual flock of new IP phones, a couple of new semiconductor chips of real interest only to manufacturers, and even a couple of new VoIP switches (PBXes) for smaller businesses.

The final item – switches – is a surprise, since small to medium-sized businesses don’t really need switches of their own any more. In fact, they’re not even a good idea to have. A major point of a VoIP business phone service such as what Phone.com provides is that a business can forget about the hassles of operating and maintaining its own PBX. In the end a business will spend far less money by having the phone service provider worry about operations and maintenance, with the user getting a virtual PBX that can do anything an on-site PBX would do, but with no up-front cost.

As for the new VoIP phones, the truth is most businesses do not buy their IP phones from a store, although for those who do most can be made to work with almost any VoIP service. What those manufacturers at CES are really doing is trying to convince VoIP providers, such as Phone.com, to resell their phones. Phone.com, and most VoIP providers, already have a selection of excellent phones – including new HD (high definition) voice models – to choose from, in addition to ATAs (analog terminal adapters) that let any standard analog phone work with VoIP. If any of the new phones have real added value, rather than just new gimmicky but unneeded features, chances are good you’ll be hearing about it and offered the phones some time after the latest CES has faded from memory.

Speaking of gimmicks – perusing the mounds of “announcements” and other spin doctor output from CES, I saw such amusing non-VoIP related things as phone headsets touted as “ideal for VoIP.” The truth is that by the time the sound signal gets pumped into the headset it is an analog electrical signal. In other words the fact that the call was carried over an IP network is irrelevant at that point. The hucksters are using VoIP as a hot come-on catchword. So it’s caveat emptor out there.

There is one highly significant VoIP-related event that did come out of CES, although really the timing has nothing to do with the show. That’s Sprint’s announcement of details of its plans to roll out service using Long Term Evolution (LTE). I’ll discuss just why that’s so important to every VoIP user in my blog next week.

Stuart Zipper is currently a contributing editor to Communications Technology, a high tech business journalism consultant and freelancer, and the past Senior Editor of TelecomWeb news break.

For anybody who’s not a Phone.com customer yet, this is your time to take the leap especially if you’re a fan of football.  Fran Tarkenton, legendary football star and also a spokesperson for us has signed a few dozen footballs to be given away to 1 new person/company per week that signs up for service.  This started yesterday will go on until April 30th of this year.

I suggest telling everyone you know to sign up and convince them to give you the ball if they win.  If you take a picture of you or them holding the winning football we’ll post it up on Facebook.  Go sign up and send me the picture at Jeb@Phone.com.  Good luck.

So many predictions for 2012 and so many summaries of 2011 – so here is another summary of the summaries:

TheStreet: The Best Tech Stories of 2011

The Wondrous:  Top 20 Anticipated Tech Products Concepts 2012

CNN: The Top 10 Tech Trends for 2012 

Engadget: Tech’s biggest misfires of 2011 

Techcrunch: The top 20 iPhone and iPad Apps for 2011 

Forbes: Top Tech Picks of 2012

VentureBeat: The Most Interesting Phones of 2011

Ad Week:  The 10 Most Viral Fortune 500 Brands of 2011 

Gigaom:  The 10 Stories That Defined Tech in 2011 

BusinessInsider:  Best new tech Start ups of 2011 

GamesBeat: The best GamesBeat Stories of 2011 

Wired: 11 Who Died in 2011 (And Were Not Named Steve)

oh.. and also AVC:  2012 the year that movements go mainstream 

and finally: College Humor:   The Best Fails of 2011 

Want to share more lists? comment on our Facebook fan page.

Happy New Year from all of us at Phone.com !

It’s the time of the year when columnists write about either the past year (That Was The Year That Was) or about their predictions for the coming year. In other words we can be either historians or gurus of one sort or the other. (“Columnist,” by the way, is an archaic term for “blogger.” It harks back to the time when what we wrote appeared in columns of text on paper, rather than as transient pixels on a screen. That’s just as the term “phone line” harks back to the days when all phone conversations were carried over copper wires, rather than in large part or entirely over the optical fibers, and radio waves, more commonly in use today.)

Since crystal ball gazing is more fun, in my opinion, the simply regurgitating the past, here’s a pair of things that I see in VoIP’s future for the coming year, and beyond.

The first big story is a steady growth, almost but not quite tsunami-class growth, of mobile VoIP for both business and personal use. Spurring that is the steady increase in the use of smartphones, which are needed for mobile VoIP. Phone.com, for instance, already offers an Android VoIP app, an iPhone VoIP app, and a mobile office app for Android and BlackBerry (those waiting for the day an app is released for their smartphone, such as yours truly who uses a Windows Phone, can log onto Phone.com’s mobile site, http://m.phone.com ).

The growth of smartphones is, of course, closely linked to the now widespread availability of 3G wireless services, 3G is the first service with the bandwidth needed to handle mobile VoIP. And of course those smartphones with WiFi capability (which is virtually all new ones these days) can make their VoIP calls that way wherever WiFi is available (and avoid the cellular data usage and charges). The situation will get even better as mobile bandwidth increases, with the industry graduating from 3.5G offerings (don’t believe the ads claiming the technologies HSPA+ and WiMax are 4G: they aren’t), to 4G speeds with the deployment of LTE by major carriers.

However I see Mobile VoIP growth in more than just smartphone terms. Think laptops and the hot category of tablets. Both can be, and increasingly will be, used as extensions by small business phone users, particularly when away from the office.

My bottom line prediction: 120-40 million mobile VoIP users worldwide, a huge percentage of them business users, in the coming year. More than half will be in the U.S. and Western Europe.

My second expectation is simply continued very strong growth in the adoption of VoIP by small to medium businesses. Driving that is the fact that businesses are becoming more comfortable with cloud-based computing of all sorts. And VoIP services, such as Phone.com, are cloud-based. Business users get a virtual PBX, for instance, rather than a physical one that has to sit in their office.

Considering the current economy, where every business is looking to save every penny possible, the economics of a virtual PBX phone system, versus a traditional PBX in a box somewhere in the building, are so compelling that it’s hard to believe any small business will even buy a traditional PBX these days.

Couple that with a maturing small business VoIP industry, which is quickly learning how to present itself in ever more understandable ways to small businessmen who don’t – and shouldn’t have to – have the technical expertise to run their own phone system. As an example, take a good look at the new Phone.com web site, rolling out as the New Year rolls in.

Stuart Zipper is currently a contributing editor to Communications Technology, a high tech business journalism consultant and freelancer, and the past Senior Editor of TelecomWeb news break.