Interesting news broke today about Verizon’s VoiceWing VoIP phone services. Apparently, Verizon plans to scrap VoiceWing in less than a month, on 3/31/2009. Existing customers will be forced to port their number to alternative services, and the porting could take as long as 3 weeks according to Verizon.

When this press release hit, I learned something I hadn’t known before about VoiceWing; this service offering by “Verizon” was actually the private label VoIP service provided by none other than DeltaThree, Inc. I know of several private label providers, started up by small businesses or even individuals, but I had no idea that a company with the size, reputation, infrastructure, and resources of Verizon would opt to offer VoIP by way of a private label provider.

It makes me wonder if Verizon’s stint into the VoIP marketplace was nothing more than a marketing test, to gage whether it would be worthwhile to promote VoIP service via packages of broadband and ATA to the consumer market at large, rather than trying to approach it from the “digital phone” angle that is being successfully offered by the cable companies – essentially VoIP carried over the cable companies’ infrastructure including fiber optic networks. In fact, Verizon announced plans for several new services, essentially VoIP technologies, that will indeed be carried over – you guessed it – Verizon’s own fiber optic networks. Also planned is a broadband carried service called “The Hub” which includes video with touch screen. (Looking forward to more on that one..)

Apparently, the marketing test didn’t pan out too well. Bobbi Henson, Verizon’s spokeswoman, stated that VoiceWing was just promoted to a “niche market” and not the masses. Without disclosing the size of VoiceWing’s customer database, apparently it was quite small – or “not material” in Henson’s words. It probably didn’t help that as things turn out, Deltathree is on shaky ground. The company is reportedly “running out of money” and has been delisted from NasDaq…Ouch.

Skype is growing by a staggering (at least to me) 380,000 people every day. Every 12 days, they add the equivalent of the population of Singapore (over 4 Million) to their user database. They have achieved a total of 405 million users worldwide, with 15 million concurrent users (apparently an important milestone for Skype.)

Another interesting statistic: Last year Skype enjoyed over 550 Million dollars in revenue, with an 8th consecutive quarter in profit – even with the current downturn in the economy. The company announced these statistics recently during a launch of their Skype 4.0, which Skype describes as ‘the most exciting and fundamental change to Skype’s software in the company’s history’.

One interesting upgrade to Skype 4.0 is called Super Wideband Audio, that improves overall audio quality, and enables higher quality video transmissions as well.

Skype claims that outside research confirms that 95% of users are saving money on their calling costs, and that about a third of users cut their phone bill by half or more. Many Skype services are free when used with in-network calls, and other services are very low cost by comparison, especially for small or medium sized business applications.

This may just be a great time to give Skype a try.Check out our Skype review here.

Source: PCWorld.com – Read original Skype story here.

Apparently, a lot of people out there are trying to track down a valid Magic Jack phone number. And apparentltly, this is because Magic Jack does not make it easy to find their phone number, or other contact information. Before I comment any further on this whole sordid affair, for those who may be looking for it (and for good reason) here it is without further ado.

Magic Jack Phone Number : 281-404-1551
Magic Jack Billing Number: 561-594-2140

While we’re at it, lets throw in their contact mailing address in case you need it:

Magic Jack
PO BOX 6785
West Palm Beach, FL 33405

According to Google’s external keyword tool, about 660 people per month are searching “Magic Jack phone number”. At first, I assumed the reason for this was that they were looking for information about how to sign up for Magic Jack and either get a new phone number, or port their existing number to Magic Jack phone service. Then I found this interesting little site called UninstallMagicJack.com – easy to do since this site popped up in the number one spot when I Googled “Magic Jack phone number”.

I was really very surprised at what I read on this site. They have quotes from Rip Off Report, and many user submitted comments, all of which decry that Magic Jack is not only a very poor quality VoIP service, but that they actually install spyware and trojans (“Eula”) on their customers’ computers to track information about user’s phone calls, so that they can serve up relevant ads on customer’s PC’s. (Yikes!)

Until now, I have never heard anything like this about Magic Jack. I find it quite disappointing, because I was beginning to believe that Magic Jack was the best value for the money in VoIP phone service. But trojans? Spyware? That’s a whole nother discussion. I personally DESPISE spyware. Many internet users have no clue what it is, making it all the more unethical. It clogs up and bogs down our computer systems, in some cases causing damage and incredibly poor performance from our PCs. But I digress. My point is, no matter how “cheap” a VoIP service provider may be, it isn’t worth the damage and wasted resources and time that Spyware/Adware/Malware/Trojans can inflict.

To be fair, I have not been able to confirm this yet. I may run a new test on Magic Jack phone service, with anti-virus and spyware remover’s close at hand, to confirm or disprove the assertions being made at the above website. But, if you happen to have any experience with Magic Jack, good or bad, PLEASE visit our Magic Jack Review page, scroll to the bottom, use our little widget to rate the service from 1 to 5, and post a review of your experience. That’s the whole reason IPCompare added the user review functionality – to let real people inform each other on the quality of service and trustworthyness of each provider we rate and review here. We appreciate it, and I’m sure you’ll score plenty of good Karma for doing your fellow VoIP user such a good service!