They're seeing their entire model being threatened.

The impediments are really technical. The biggest problem is perceived lack of quality, reliability. A lot of people are still uncertain that their Internet connection will be reliable and on all the time. There are some reports of voice quality not being as good as traditional lines. And there are questions about 911. But those are all rapidly being worked out. And the marketplace is showing that the numbers of subscribers are growing steadily.

The vast majority of this is a boondoggle.

The difference is that there's really not a cost advantage or economies of scale that limit the number of providers. So they're just in the pool with everyone else now.

This is why the Internet-phone industry is probably going to replace entirely what we might call loosely the analog method of phone calls over a period of years.

It will become the phone industry.