A few months ago I speculated on the integration of voice in Second Life; in a few days time, Linden will begin to ramp up a beta programme for voice features to all SL residents.
Though beta participation will be free, it sounds as though voice may be limited to landowners…strangely inverting the wireless mobility of telephony in First Life! It’s a little disappointing that Linden don’t plan to enable interoperability with the PSTN, Skype or other large voice networks. It seems the proliferation of voice-as-a-feature is deepening ’silos of voice’.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to call someone in SL from your mobile handset and vice-versa? Perhaps even receiving calls from objects in SL, a la Botanicalls ;)
Imran,
I think you may be misreading the landowner bit. My understanding is that landowners will be able to enable/disable voice on their own parcels, but it won't be necessary to be a landowner to use voice on those parcels where it has been enabled.
I guess it can be read both ways...
'...like other products, voice will only be active on certain digital geographies, but private island owners will have the option to enable voice on their own land, depending on the terms of their subscription...'