Amazon’s Alexa is moving towards VoIP
Alexa, Amazon’s voice-controlled device and operating system, is already proving very successful in the market place. Based on a recent patent filed May 2, 2017, it appears that Amazon is looking to take the Alexa software even further, specifically into the VoIP phone market.
The plan from Amazon utilizes VoIP technology and integrates it directly into the hardware. The patent illustrates that Alexa would be able to link directly to a user’s service provider and then route all call directly to Alexa over the network.
While this isn’t very new in the market (Microsoft’s Skype), it builds functionality into a much-admired piece of hardware and voice-recognition software. Costs associated with the calls will be billed as usual to the network carrier but will be in the US only at first. While there are others in the market already, it will be interesting to wait and see how Amazon will innovate in this arena.