Privacy Pioneer Promises
Secure VOIP
<<<... "Now, the Internet is ready for it," he said, citing the heady growth in VOIP communication technology. "There are some nice protocols today for supporting VOIP, and theres a big industry being built on these protocols. This prototype is much like PGPfone, but its brought up to date with the modern VOIP protocols." Zimmermann, who became the target of a criminal investigation after he released the PGP as freeware in 1991, is pounding the pavement in search of funding to make Zfone a commercial venture.
He has received bridge funding from VOIP pioneer Jeff Pulver and former White House terrorism advisor Richard Clarke, and some technical and business development help from PGP Corp., but the immediate plan is to score a round of venture capital investment to speed up development of Zfone for the wider market. "I have talked to some investors and there is a significant amount of interest. We might see something very soon," Zimmermann said.
He also said he would be happy with either a seed round in the range of $750,000 or a Series A round in the range of $5 million. "There is a need for secure VOIP. I think I can do it better than anyone else. I have some reason to think the market will trust me," he said. The Zfone prototype is a Mac-only application, but Zimmermann acknowledges that a Windows version would be ideal to make a commercial venture successful.
He said he plans to publish a paper detailing the encryption protocol by the end of August and release the source code for Zfone for peer review. Click here to read about Skypes VOIP software for Mac and Linux OS. Zimmermann said he believes that approach will give his product a leg up on Skype, the popular peer-to-peer application. "Skype doesnt tell you how it works, so you dont know if the encryption works or not. Thats not a knock on Skype, but we just dont know a lot about it." more>>>