Daiwa EuroTelcoblog No. 80: Tuesday 28th September, 2004 - P2P telephony: it's all about networking

Popular Telephony, developers of the Peerio P2P telephony application we profiled back in late June in issue No. 52 (http://eurotelcoblog.blogspot.com/2004/06/daiwa-eurotelcoblog-no_25.html), are set to make two interesting announcements today. The first is a contract with French terminal manufacturer Logicom, to develop a Peerio DECT phone for the consumer market, as well as an IP/PSTN gateway. This deal, which was signed some months back but not officially announced until today, should see the first Peerio consumer phones hitting the market in Q1 2005.

The other announcement, more intriguing from a "big picture" strategic perspective, is the appointment of a new advisory board member: Kevin Power, chairman of ECTA, the European Competitive Telecommunications Association. Coming on the heels of Skype's appointment of a board member from Cisco (no direct investment or involvement from Cisco itself), this highlights the importance of networking of the human variety. Without wanting to read too much into this news, it is fair to point out that ECTA has a large and eclectic membership (http://www.ectaportal.com/html/index.php?pgd=members_list), and given Peerio's apparent orientation of effecting change from inside the industry via an embedded product strategy, we wonder how the "power of the network" will be affected by bringing Mr. Power onboard.