VoIP and Casabi everywhere in '09?

Casabi hasn't tooted its own horn much, but the company's SIP "web light" client and backend server architecture has slowly and carefully proliferated across cable and traditional phone companies over the past three years. Will 2009 be the breakout year for Casabi?

Two weeks ago, Casabi showed up in Cincinnati Bell territory as part of a solution to provide two-way SMS via "landline" (well, a VoIP-enabled solution that mostly acts like a landline). Earlier this year, EMBARQ rolled out their Casabi-enabled solution and Comcast showed of a Casabi solution at CES 2008. If you dig further back, AT&T was seen tinkering with Casabi at CES 2006.

Landline and cable companies like Casabi because it provides more perceived value than a plug-and-play VoIP voice replacement, so they can charge more. It also provides "stickiness" in retaining customers over vanilla VoIP alternatives. Hardware vendors like Casabi because it's just a software load, so it can add value to cordless phones, set top boxes and other devices. VTech has been joined by Motorola, Arris and Sagem in supporting Casabi.

At the core, Casabi is a client-server model that incorporates a simplified web client on an in-home device - cordless phones were the initial target -- for the consumer to use to receive small amounts of information, such as weather reports, sports scores, breaking news, stock quotes and (gag) horoscopes; the client has been expanded to support visual voice mail, IM, two-way SMS, Yellow Pages local search and more. On the back end, Casabi runs a network system infrastructure to deliver both the customized apps for carriers and the data behind them.

Future versions of Casabi will show up on larger tablet-style devices, moving beyond the handset form factor into something a bit more convenient for use in ordering a pizza or looking up sports scores while kicking back on the couch. There's nothing to say that Casabi won't show up in the wireless arena as well. The light client has easily been shoehorned into cordless DECT phones, so porting it to a smart phone should be relatively easy, as handsets like the iPhone, the BlackBerry Storm, and the T-Mobile G1 wouldn't break a sweat running it. Casabi's advantage would be to provide a single user interface between landline home phones and mobile phones. With cable companies moving into the wireless arena, it's not something to ignore.

Ironically, Casabi's surge in popularity comes as Jeff Pulver's muse moved from VoIP and preaching about purple value-added minutes to social media. Pulver spent his last year on the podium calling for VoIP services beyond cheap voice and predicted the ultimate downfall of mobile VoIP services - just another flavor of cheap voice. Casabi provides "purple minutes" beyond voice and this reporter has a gut hunch that we may see social media apps as the next wave of Casabi functionality.