With the Race-to-Zero behind us, it’s cool to be Voice.

Voice wasn’t always cool.

In fact, it was only in the few years leading up to Bubble 2.0 that the voice business witnessed it’s first fresh influx of human and financial capital since the ’70′s and ’80′s. Back then, it was the varying degrees of deregulation that motivated entrepreneurs aplenty to join a land grab previously closed to anyone not running a telco. But in the 25 years or so in between, while we innovated, frankly – it’s been a bit dull at times.

We had the long distance business, which surely minted many millionaires. We had the never-die PBX business, which made many a sales person a good career. Neither particularly cool though, certainly not when measured by the web generation yardstick.  But in the mid 2000′s, the voice business suddenly found its…voice. Even on Sand Hill Road. The term Voice 2.0 was born, and entrepreneurs from everywhere but telecom came knocking.

Apart from the overly optimistic times we were living in five or so years ago, the budding euphoria came mainly from two sources: one, that the walls were tumbling on selling transport to consumers, thanks to VoIP, and two that more open platform environments – like the ones we were seeing in the Web – would offer unique, first-mover opportunities.

Well, while the industry has survived a downturn and is clearly looking up, the race-to-zero (a clock, that if we could watch it real time, would display the downward spiral of the cost of a call), took its share of prisoners. Turns out too many made the same bet while the clock moved faster than anyone expected, eliminating much of the low hanging arbitrage fruit. A few big winners have emerged of those who built businesses on the premise of saving users money on transport-related fees – just not as many as the VC community hoped for.

But with the end of one race, starts another. This one is about creating innovative ideas, that solve real business process issues and leverage all the cloud has to offer. Enter cool. This is a formula that attracts repeat, already exited entrepreneurs who see an industry in change, a capital-efficient way to get to market – and an addressable market mirrored by few others.

Recently, a variety of these entrepreneurs contributed to a ebook on Cloud Communications. From it, I pulled a small excerpt from Irv Shapiro – a newcomer the industry is lucky to have – that sums up where we think we are now:

“Cloud-based applications will dramatically enhance the utilization the telephone technologies in businesses of every size, turning the utility-based telephone from a cost center into a profit center.”

Now that would be cool.