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Net Phones Taking Off in the Third World
dipfan writes "Internet telephone technology is surging in popularity and starting to make a big dent in telephone revenues in the Third World, for a simple reason: cost. A call from Honduras to the US over the net is just 5 or 10 cents a minute at an internet cafe, compared with $1+ a minute through a telco, reports the Washington Post, which compares the situation to the US where internet telephony "is used mostly by college students and geeks" who have the time and energy to install the software."
Be careful of bandwith issues. Bandwidth will always be a problem. No matter how much bandwidth you add, no matter how big you make your highways, no matter how much oil you drill, people will always use as much as you make, even if it means wasting it or creating enough traffic to degrade the whole thing. There is no substitute for efficiency. A better license can compensate for inferior technology to only a minor degree.
1) Decrease the costs of traditional telephone service because they will need to compete with net based services.
2) Increase the costs associated with connections to the internet, because as people use more, the costs for everyone goes up.
I'm not sure which will actually occur, but I bet with services such as this around, you'll see a lot of broadband companies upset because they will want their piece of the action. If the average user starts using his/her connection for phone services too instead of just downloading, why are people so confused when they hear about price increases such as this. To me, it just makes sense, more people will use it for more things==service costs more to provide.
Now I'm just waiting for some level of QOS to implemented world wide for this sort of thing, that way my phone call doesn't wait for your warez. Know what I mean?