Seven Scale Enters Cloudvox in Cloud Telephony Race

Providing voice phone services is getting easier all the time. Developers need merely write a few lines of code in a familiar programming language and pay a few bucks a month for a phone number. The code, running in a Web or other application, tells a hosted service to do things like making, receiving or otherwise handling calls. The developer's company pays a few cents a minute for every call that the service handles for its customers. The availability of such hosted services moves telephony out of the realm of telecom specialists and into the hands of ordinary Web companies. The latest entry in the field is Cloudvox, offered by Seattle-based Seven Scale.