Microsoft Brings VoIP to Vista

November 10th, 2006: Microsoft is gearing up to launch into the VoIP market early next year, combining VoIP, video conferencing, email and instant messaging into one Windows Vista product.

According to media reports, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer outline the new plan in Japan earlier this week saying that the new service would be tied into the company’s operating system as well as being integrated with server and desktop applications.

Microsoft has been gradually increasing its VoIP capabilities ever since it acquired the internet telephony start-up Teleo in late 2005, and while details of the service are vague at the moment, Office 2007 looks to be playing the lead part in tying everything together.

Microsoft already offers VoIP services via its Messenger client, however, its service is seen as somewhat inferior to the industry dominating Skype.

“We are going to enter the voice-over-IP at the beginning of next year,” Ballmer reportedly said at the Tokyo conference on Monday. It may be coming to the VoIP party fashionably late, but this way it can at least avoid what could have been yet another Vista antitrust headache.

Comment on this story