Too many bills for too few services that are too hard to use anyway. In the end, it is all just bits, so we’re ready to have one big fat data pipe and one bill for VOIP telephone calls, internet, email, video conferencing, music and movies. Dialcom’s new video conferencing plug-in for Skype may be bringing us one step closer to more services over our broadband connection. Of course, we really want HD quality, but it looks like that is a long way off. For now, we’ll settle for easy setup and decent performance of 320×240 over our DSL line. Hopefully this totally unfounded rumor means Skype will incorporate this functionality soon – we don’t want to fiddle with add-ons.
We’ve reduced our household to a family cellphone plan, DSL, and a local Blockbuster membership (across the street from us, although seeing this about our very Blockbuster makes us sweat a bit). We still have to pay for a landline phone connection in order to get the DSL, but will hopefully be fixed soon. We’ll probably use a music service once Yahoo! Music Unlimited gets its act together – price is fine, but the usability and selection need work. Eventually, let’s hope we can have a single high-speed wireless connection that will serve everything – one bill for ALL data, with our mobile phone using VOIP as well, and laptop access wherever we feel like plopping down. Yummy.