WebRTC is a standard for Web browsers to enable peer-to-peer, real-time connections - in other words voice and video can both become features on the browser so two people online and behind a Chrome or Firefox browser (at present) can simply connect to video or voice chat. No more Mr. Intermediary voice and video service provider?

Possibly. In the long run. More likely WebRTC will play midwife to new forms of person-to-person voice and video. Exciting stuff.

So in the short run the imperative for existing players will be to blend this capability with existing voice and video systems - both consumer and business. So we find, for instance, that Microsoft (which now owns Skype, of course) is heavily involved in WebRTC and has been donating code to the effort. We might soon expect some sort of integration strategy so that Skype users can initiate calls from any device using WebRTC. Just a guess.

In that vein, Ericsson, which was an early participant in the RTC standards process, has announced WebRTC for its IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) platform.

Ericsson says its platform will enable any device to be reached by an existing mobile number and at the AT&T Developer Summit, AT&T announced its Call Management API powered by Ericsson's IMS Innovation Platform.

The press release has Geoff Hollingworth, head of Business Innovation, Ericsson North America, saying: "Developers will take the concept of the existing phone call, see it as a digital stream and innovate accordingly. Recording, transcribing, contextualizing, translating, on any connected device, using people's existing phone number – all are just the beginnings of possibility."