Yahoo! is going to upgrade its dial in/ dial out feature in its instant messenger (IM). This will enable Yahoo! users to use their IM client to dial-in/out to traditional phone or mobile networks, along with new SIP-based VoIP services.



However, it must be clarified that Yahoo! is not launching an entirely new VoIP service. It is just upgrading what is currently available.



Notwithstanding the current excitement about Yahoo! jumping into the fray for a bite in the Skype market, Yahoo! is yet to make any announcement on this. However, it is expected that the announcement of the date will come soon.



When the new service is eventually launched, the estimated 82 million people worldwide Yahoo! IM users will be able to call any traditional fixed or wireless phone number in about 180 countries. They will also be able to purchase a phone number on which to receive calls. The service will come with a free voicemail box.



Now that Yahoo! has jumped in, can Google be far behind? For sometime now, Google has been seriously contemplating on gate-crashing the VoIP market with its IM Google Talk. In fact Google has come up with a most clever step in that direction was their choice of protocol for Google Talk - XMPP. Jabber Software Foundation popularized XMPP and standardized it through the IETF with - what they termed as - ‘famous open, secure, ad-free alternative to consumer IM services like AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo!’



One of the main benefits of choosing an open platform is that it takes advantage of available client GUIs for instance. Besides, it can leverage specific and standardized extensions of the XMPP protocol or what is known as JEPs. The Jabber Software Foundation developed a set of complementary protocol extensions by allowing custom XML payloads to be developed. The one JEP which is of interest for us now is JEP-0009. This JEP defines a method for carrying XML-RPC encoded requests and responses over Jabber/XMPP.



The John Wilson developed Groovy XML-RPC module which is built upon the Smack library and its XML-RPC code to add XML-RPC support through Google talk is particularly easy to use to expose XML-RPC services through innovative use of Groovy closures. This will enable users to do remote procedure calls through Jabber.



We can rest assured that in the next 6 months to 1 year, as the heat builds up in the VoIP market, there would be a few fires flying. With big players joining in the battle for grabbing the market share VoIP has to offer, the show can be expected to be nothing short of spectacular! As passing thoughts, just leave a penny for the small players who just started.