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VoIP for the residential customer would provide them with the ability to use their broadband Internet connection for Voice traffic and could eliminate the need for a phone line altogether (provided your broadband is not DSL). There are many areas of the country where long distance is not free, it is a flat rate service, or some other charging mechanism applies. VoIP could eliminate this.
I think that it is very realistic to assume that video phones (which have been around for quite a while) will get a new birth through the VoIP, data, and convergence strategies happening as we "speak", particularly with carrier companies providing improved packet based services. ENUM is an initiative taken on by the IETF to provide DNS mapping for you phone numbers, so you could have a phone, fax, and children's line all map to your one DNS entry making communication easier than having three phone numbers.
This was first published in July 2003