It’s been discussed at length how what Google Voice is starting could significantly alter the telecom industry, even if there’s still a significant number of people who don’t understand why (or what Google Voice even does). While 2009 involved lifting voicemail, contact management and other functionality off of the phone company and delivering it to the user on a server (aka the “cloud”), 2010 will be about integrating Google’s acuiqistion of softphone operator Gizmo5, and making Google Voice increasingly like Skype – and then some.

Says Google’s Bradley Horowitz to eWeek:

“What we’re trying to do with telephony is give people a seamless experience that frees up their telephony communication from the silos where it’s lived for the last decade. Voicemail, my contacts, all of those things have been segregated from the rest of my Web experience. We have big plans to do a better job.”

Of course as Google (and inevitably a flurry of other more limber companies) begin doing a better job with the network GUI/Voicemail/call mechanics and user experience than the phone companies, companies like AT&T and Verizon face the possibility of being little more than dumb pipe providers. This utterly terrifies all cable and phone executives. To stop this, and the obliteration of dying cash cow business models (wireless “minutes,” SMS come to mind) companies used to generations of pampered monopoly are going to have to do two things they’re not exactly known for: innovate and quickly adapt.

So far, AT&T and Verizon have done neither. Instead, the baby bells have done what they do best: use lobbyists and smear merchants to attack Google’s credibility. AT&T and Verizon’s policy folks tried very hard in 2009 to paint Google as the worst sort of evil (read: AT&T’s claim that Google hates nuns, or AT&T/Verizon funded Scott Cleland’s fact-optional claim that Google’s a evil bandwidth-sucking monster that doesn’t invest in infrastructure). If the phone companies want to beat back Google in 2010, they’re going to have to stop whining and actually start competing – and that’s good news for consumers.

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