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A few days ago the collaboration between Phonegnome and Iotum has been announced.

The partnership of PhoneGnome and iotum enables PhoneGnome owners’
access to intelligent features such as prioritization of calls based on
the caller and user activity. The partnership with iotum enables
PhoneGnome owners to receive the calls they want, avoid the calls they
don’t want, on the device they want to use.

This integration means that presence-enabled services are finally integrated into a VoIP service for end users. The description above is related to the simplest way to integrate presence into a telephony system, that means the final user can manage how to receive calls, when and from who.

Telecom people would say: you can do that with POTS as well!. Yes, it is not properly the same, but there are a lot of supplementary telephony services (STS) like call barring, call forwarding and call waiting as well as message boxes that you can use with a traditional telephony service also. So, is it a real news ?

I’m the first person who is firmly convinced that VoIP + presence = value.
But, there is one factor missed here: Web.
I’m not really sure if, in a pure consumer context, Iotum+PG services are going to be widely used. I see them much more targetted to a business market. And, for high profile business users. In a tratitional-telephony world, STS are poorly used, so I still have to figure out why they should be used now, in an IP scenario.

On the other hand, in a pure Web context, I can find much more applications to be supplied to the final user, strictly linked to other web applications users are willing to use. And, in this case, presence doesn’t only mean managing the call routing or blocking incoming calls, but something much more effective.

Technorati Tags: luca filigheddu, phonegnome, pots, voip, presence, iotum