Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Am I missing something in the latest announcements from SipPhone? 

I know I must be. You see, the new Gizmo project business offering with All Calls Free for Business looks to me like nothing more than centralized billing – an announcement about accounting.  If it’s really an announcement about accounting that’s snooze… not news. 

From the press release, here are the key features:

1. All Calls Free calling plan - Announced July 20th, 2006 right?
2. Asterisk PBX support - Announced May 23rd, 2006. 
3. Centralized Billing - This is new.
4. Direct Dial “Call In” numbers - Area 775, their free phone number service, was announced February 16, 2006.
5. Free Voicemail - This was in from the beginning, right?
6. Free Call Forwarding - You’ve been able to do this for a while too, right?
7. Free Conference Calling - And Gizmo has had a deal with FreeConference.com for a while too, right?
8. Online Presence - There from the beginning.
9. Instant Messaging - Also there from the beginning, with interop to Google announced January 18th, 2006.

Don’t get me wrong.  I use Gizmo, and I’m a big fan of their service.  This latest announcement generated a pile of coverage from a bunch of really well known blogs too, like: VoIP & Gadgets Blog, GigaOM, VoIP Watch, Webtown, VoIP Blog and 21talks. 

I just must have missed something in the newsworthiness of this latest release, right? What do you guys know that I don’t?

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