Shalom, y’all. That’s a shout-out to my Jewish peeps for Rosh Hashanah! Happy New Year! Happy new start!

And a new start is exactly what we need. I, like everyone else, watched Monday’s freefall in the wake of the bailout bill failing. And today, I’ve been subjected to a media storm of political blame-gaming (eye-roll. Right now.), Bush’s pre-market-opening plea for action, a variety of news reports about “Main Street” being furious and not bothering to educate themselves on what’s at stake, the Dow closing up 485 points, and some lawmakers in light of that saying this isn’t much of a crisis after all, that there isn’t a liquidity issue, that those “bad” assets have value and we’re just dealing with an accounting problem (!!!) ... Meanwhile, European markets were “volatile,” shall we say, we saw more government intervention overseas to prevent further bank failures, inter-bank interest rates are up to record highs (there goes that liquidity) and commercial paper — the lines of credit that businesses rely on to pay for goods and services every month — is frozen at the moment, which of course affects the suppliers that those businesses buy from as well. This latter issue has led CNBC pundits to nervously float the specter of shuttered doors, layoffs starting at any minute and massive “cost-cutting” just to buy inventory to sell. It just all goes to show that there is an immense lack of clarity as to the full scope of the crisis, potential ramifications and effect around the globe and on the proverbial Average American, as if there were such a person.

The only relief from the ongoing bombardment of dismal outlooks is the rather entertaining coverage of the lead-up to the Biden-Palin showdown on Thursday. Of course, by Thursday we could be looking at a very different economic world than today, today being by all accounts the equivalent of an investor jitters BYE week with Congress out of session for the holiday. God knows what tomorrow will bring.

So what does any of this have to do with anything in telecom? Well, there are actually winners in all of this. Potentially — if service providers move on it. I feel rather ghoulish pointing it out, but where there’s a need for cost-cutting, VoIP gets a push. As companies find themselves with mounting unpaid bills, unpaid payrolls and the prospect of cutting salaries, personnel and inventory to keep operations rolling along in the absence of commercial paper, anything that’s easy to save some pennies on suddenly moves from the “gotta look at that one of these days” to the “top priority” column.

It’s no secret that VoIP, especially SIP trunking and hosted services, can save a lot of money for companies about to become financial road kill, and in fact that probably sounds like a pretty vapid thing to say coming from a (dare I say “seasoned?”) telecom reporter. But service providers need to remember that the Average American (there’s that guy again) doesn’t know a damn thing about it. The jarring lack of education in the market as to VoIP and its cheapness and its ease of implementation has always been a gating factor, but now, service providers have an opportunity to turn VoIP into an efficient, successful vulture, feasting on the carrion left from this economic crisis.

Sorry, was that carrion comment too much?

There’s been so much talk of unified communications, fixed-mobile convergence, presence and other enhanced IP services — and those are the fun things to talk about. But service providers ignore a golden opportunity within the panic and paranoia and global meltdown to take plain old VoIP and make it into a bright spot, for everyone involved.

See? From vulture to bright spot. It’s all how you look at it.