Beginning today, South Korea has banned U.S.-based VoIP services to all of the U.S. soldiers currently stationed there.

What this means is that they will now have to use a South Korean provider, like Hanaro Telecom Inc, Korea Telecom Corp., or LG Dacom Corp. In addition, soldiers will have to secure a local number in South Korea to make VoIP calls.

Russell Shaw had this to say,

This has come about after a June 2006 statement by some of South Korea’s major Internet service providers that they would block phone calls over the Internet over connections from providers not registered under the Korean Telecommunications Business Act. But after U.S. Forces Korea Commander General Burwell Baxter Bell said the move would impact service members’ quality of life, the companies agreed to delay enforcing the act until June 1, 2007.Now, I am going to control my anger here.

If it weren’t for our dedicated yet underpaid forces in South Korea, Kim Jung-Il and those maniacs in North Korea likely would have overran the south years ago. If that had happened, there wouldn’t be telcos such as Korea Telecom Corp., Hanaro Telecom Inc. as well as LG Dacom Corp. And the fat cats that run these companies might be in exile, or worse.

In a new article published on xchange magazine’s xchange online by Kelly Teal, the dire situation of many VoIP companies.

For one thing, the expense of VoIP itself has set back companies that are trying to compete with the big telco voice companies out there. –particularly those offering multiple service packages.

In his article Kelly quotes two telecom industry analysts:

“I don’t see how far it can go — there is no future,” Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for Infonetics Research, says of the VoIP pure-play model. “They really need to come up with something new that has nothing to do anymore with who they were in the past.”

Sally Cohen, an analyst who covers consumer VoIP and broadband for Forrester Research, says consumers are not really interested in a pure-play solution. Despite the mountains of money Vonage has spent on advertising to evangelize VoIP services to the nation, Cohen’s recently released report, “VoIP Marketers: Price And Features Slowly Win Over Consumers,” finds 3 percent of online consumers in 2004 paid for pure-play VoIP and that’s only risen two percentage points since then. That slow growth illustrates Cohen’s opinion that Vonage is “marketing to a disinterested public.”

Though Kelly seems to think that Vonage understands the cons of pure play, quoting a Vonage spokesperson about the dual-mode phone to be released by the year’s end, many people feel that a new phone model isn’t going to do much when the problem is maketing to a disunterested public.

Though high interantional mobile rates have opened the market to alternative VoIP services like Rebtel and Jajah, there always seems to be some added inconvenience to using a new system.

That said, there are a couple new low-cost international calling services that come pretty close to repicating the traditional phone experience with more features.

TalkPlus and Eqo are two of these companies. While they take similar approaches, they each have significant differences. With both of these services you can set up a call via web interface. The service then makes local calls to you and the person you are calling. You pay for the local calls and the connecting international call. But at least you don’t have to receive a call to make a call.

Eqo uses low-cost international VoIP connections, while TalkPlus uses low-cost international voice routes.

Another difference if that Eqo focuses only on mobile customers, while TalkPlus Global can be used from traditional landline phones as well.

In an interview with Juan Carlos Perez, Google’s product manager Nathan Stoll hints at the possibility that news links from YouTube (owned by Google) are likely to be integrated with Google News.

When Perez asked Stoll if there are plans to add a video component to Google News, Stoll responded,

We don’t want to preannounce any features but our Google News philosophy is to give users access to all the perspectives on a news story. To the extent that a lot of those are in video and becoming available online, we’d certainly love to make those perspectives available and easily discoverable.

Read more about this latest move by Google in the Computerworld interview.

The German telephone company, Deutsche Telekom, announced today that they are investing in JAJAH. Though they have yet to disclose the specifics, they have participated in the recent $20 million funding round with Intel.

JAJAH functions quite differently from its competitors like Skype and Vonage. JAJAH users still must hang onto their existing land line, though the service does allow users to make free or cheap calls using the internet.

As Forbes reported today, JAJAH certainly has its work cut out. With some 2 millions users, they’re still a far cry from the 200 million users of Skype, and the market is becoming increasingly crowded.

Should be interesting.

Shortly after Skype introduced version 2.6 of its Mac software, bragging that it was the only time such a major feature was released for the Mac, a chorus of discontent from users initiated the release of version 2.6.0.140 with a list of bug fixes.

Some changes include an update for Bluetooth audio, chaning the ‘Rename’ function to ‘Edit Contact’, as well as fixing deleted header files from the Skype framework.

The latest Mac 2.6 version includes the following features:

1. Free Skype-to-Skype calls and Video Calls
2. Low cost international calls
3. Basic chat and emoticons and Group chat
4. Video calling and Conference calling
5. Profile settings and personalizing Skype
6. File and Money transfer
7. Call forwarding
8. Skypecasts and SkypeFind
9. Add Skype and SkypeOut contacts
10. Import contacts and View Outlook contacts

We are taking action because we believe the rights to the Skype and FastTrack technologies were swept out from under our feet, and our 28 million Morpheus users were stolen from us.

said Michael Weiss, CEO of StreamCast .

StreamCast Networks has armed up against Skype founders claiming that they are illegally using company’s P2P technology to develop their VoIP services.

In a lawsuit, the Morpheus founder alleged that Skype and Joost developers, Niklas Zenstromm and Janus Friis have illegally used its P2P client FastTrack to provide video and VoIP video services on the web.

The lawsuit also indicts eBay as a defendant along with other parties who snatched technology rights from StreamCast in a breach of contract.

Skype announced they’ve made it even easier for small businesses to jump on the Skype bandwagon, by introducing their Small Business Pack.

The Pack includes a Skype for Business download, 10 five month subscriptions to Skype Pro™ (Skype’s new internet communications package) worth €100 and €50 of Skype credit for making calls to landlines and mobiles across the world.

It’s available from the Skype online store for €99+VAT.

Enrico Noseda, director, telecom business development at Skype says,

Skype has over 196 million registered users today and in some countries more than 30% of those are business users. We want to give our business users a simple and more productive way to communicate but pay less for the privilege. With Skype Pro included, people can make *0/min unlimited calls to domestic landlines along with a series of premium Skype features and discounts on Skype-certified hardware.

Vonage Holdings Corp. will be hold their 2007 Annual Stockholders’ Meeting on Tuesday, May 29, 2007. The event begins at 2:00 p.m. ET at the Robert Meyner Reception Center in the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ.

If you want to listen in on the meeting, it will be webcast live through Vonage’s Investor Relations website at http://ir.vonage.com.

Vonage Stockholders Invited

Any Vonage stockholder who is on record as of the close of business on March 30, 2007 can attend the 2007 Annual Stockholders’ Meeting and vote their shares. Those stockholders in attendance must present a valid form of photo ID and proof of their share ownership to gain admittance.

This new service offers free virtual numbers so that you can communicate with anyone with whom you’re not sure about giving your real number. Perfect for online dating, those relationships that you’re just not sure about, or for when you just don’t want to pay long distance fees.

You can add or cancel virtual numbers are any time. To begin, you enter someone’s email address on the Jangl site and then enter your own phone number and email address. You can leave the person a voice message right then, about which they will be notified via email.

If they want they can hear your message. If they want to call they go to Jangl and get their own virtual number. Real simple, real anonymous.