What with the Interop show this week, it should come as no surprise that VOIP would grab some headlines, but the Internet telephony technology really has been front and center for most of the spring. At Interop, Cisco, Juniper and Meru touted WLAN technologies, including VOIP wares. Macromedia injected Breeze 5 with VOIP support. On the consumer front, The New York Times takes a look at how VOIP is weaving its way into the home. AOL said it would launch a VOIP service in the very near future. Throughout March and April, VOIP garnered a lot of attention as well. On the last day of March, Telstra brought forth an enterprise VOIP service to U.S. businesses. VOIP drew considerable interest at CeBit in Hanover, Germany. Also, Level 3 withdrew a petition to the FCC that called for reducing access charges paid to telecommunications carriers when calls originated over VOIP but ended on the traditional telephone network.And the VOIP Security Alliance listed the creation of a taxonomy to classify threats and outline requirements as its first set of priorities. Back in February, a handful of companies including Avaya, 3Com, Alcatel, Qualys, Verizon, Nortel, VeriSign, formed the VOIP Security Alliance to spur adoption and make public information about security issues concerning VOIP. The EU in February created what it calls a level playing field for VOIP. There are, of course, still kinks to be worked out, security to be tightened, and telephone infrastructure questions to be answered, but the vendors are trudging ahead with products and services and VOIP is showing up in more and more places, while industry organizations and government bodies heat up their irons to smooth out the wrinkles. Technology Industry