Verizon has announced that for 11 states and Washington, D.C., its Digital Voice product will be a total Voice over Internet Protocol solution. The move takes advantage of the Verizon’s investment in fiber optics and reduces the costs of maintaining old copper lines.  Fiber to the Home doesn’t come cheap either – with an estimated expense of $650 per Verizon household, but after the initial expense the upkeep costs go way down.

And those fiber lines provide Verizon customers the same line for television, Internet connections and other service offerings like video on demand – which help recoup costs faster.

With nearly a quarter of all homes in the U.S. giving up landlines for wireless, Verizon is hoping the shift to digital voice will lessen some of those losses. And because the FiOS service never interacts with the public internet, Verizon has the ability to manage voice quality.

In the May edition of Internet Telephony Paula Bernier reported on the new relationship between Skype and Verizon Wireless.

The VoIP services and wireless industry leaders at Mobile World Congress in February announced an arrangement through which Skype will be supported by Verizon Wireless. The Skype client was on nine Verizon Wireless smartphones when the companies launched their joint effort in March.

“I’ve been focusing on driving innovation in a few key areas for us – video, mobile, and the Web,” Jonathan Rosenberg, Skype’s new chief technology strategist, recently told INTERNET TELEPHONY. “Skype has already been incredibly successful in the area of video. Already, 34 percent of Skype-to-Skype calls include video, and that has peaked at a little more than 40 percent during holidays like Christmas or New Year’s Day. That’s just huge, and it means that the ‘network effect’ – which has really prevented real-time video from taking off in the past – has been achieved.

“We have also been very successful in the mobile sector, with deep integration with 3UK, which has now carried over 1 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes over their network, and now Verizon Wireless,” adds Rosenberg. “Plus, we launched Skype for iPhone, one of the most popular apps ever. My goal is to build on those leads and drive them even further.”

By Alice Straight.