Columbia Gets Verizon Grants for Messaging and Presence

Verizon is working with Columbia University to gather research on both secure messaging and presence based packet switching technology.

The research is being conducted under the direction of the renowned VoIP

expert, Professor Henning Schulzrinne. The two projects — funded by Verizon

Laboratories — will be in areas related to the overall development of

packet-switched telephony.

I guess this is Verizon’s way to try and compete with the AT&T Labs.

A college professor and two students. Right.

And why, if Yahoo is Verizon’s partner on DSL, and Yahoo has IM, would the east coast telco need to learn more. Are they mistrusting of what Yahoo is telling them? Or is there something else going on here that hasn’t yet been revealed?

Yesterday Verizon indicated a bigger DSL push is coming. That should in theory be good for Yahoo too