Om Malik has posted an insightful semi-rant about how VoIP vendors are continuing to go down the road of locking in customers with proprietary devices and silo’d services, and how this can’t be good for the consumer or the VoIP industry as a whole. I agree with him, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out as consumers have pretty clearly indicated they don’t appreciate this kind of lock-in. Om notes how the cellular providers have had to subsidize their locked-in hardware to get users to sign up, but at least in that model they can recoup much of those costs on the service end. VoiP providers are starting to do the same, as Vonage just announced $100 hardware rebates for new customers, but with the low to non-existent service costs of VoIP this model doesn’t make nearly as much sense.

Techdirt also just made note of VoIP’s March Towards Divergence, specifically with regards to the new Skype/Netgear WiFi phones:

People don’t like that they have to buy a separate phone if they want to switch providers — and having a phone that only works using Skype and only when connected to a WiFi router is even less exciting because you’re quite limited in where you can actually use it.