Wow – quite a lot of things happening while I was away! Residential VoIP has become the hottest app du jour among all the service providers, being attacked by fixed and mobile carriers, MSOs, and Internet portals. Cable operators in particular have been quickly adding new subs, reaching about 1.4 million users and 0.5 net adds in the US in Q2 ‘05. On the fixed side, Verizon and Bell South are going through the process of picking vendors and early network deployment. The incumbents are protecting their turf, particularly since new entrants such as Vonage have had success gaining new subscribers. AOL also announced TotalTalk, a new service that is integrated with AIM (AOL Instant Messenger app) and is expected to compete with other VoIP services from Yahoo! and MSN.