Slashdot Mirror
Will A Price War Run VoIP Out of Business?
ElCheapo writes "News.com looks at the recent price war that has erupted amongst VoIP providers. How much lower can costs for unlimited long distance go before next-generation phone services run themselves out of business? How does this compare with free services that don't offer connectivity to the PSTN?
Packet8 offers service for $19.99/month, a level analysts say is unsustainable. Vonage recently dropped their rates to $35/month to match VoicePulse.
VoicePulse is known to use a softswitch based on the Asterisk open source PBX. Will open source allow startups to compete with the traditional LECs?"
BigZoo's 2.9 cents a minute makes it all irrelevant.
Qwest just annouced in minneapolis that they will be testing there VoIP here...it will be interesting to see how it works out, i think theres good market potential for it.
where else are there major providers trying this out at?
I think it's just a matter of time really... sure, for now the voIP system costs alot, but eventually it will probably come down in price, and will probably start to beat out (especially in long-distance calls) some of the telephone companies...
that probably won't be for a while though, and they'll probably see hard times before that happens, but if they stick through it and improve the technology, I think voIP definately has an edge...
An article like this betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of capitalism. They wont run out of business.
Prices will drop until companies start failing. (If in fact the low prices are unsustainable) So long as there are customers willing to pay for VoIP, there will always be business.
If the price is too high, then they'll be out of business. If the prices are low, they can make it up on volume.
Yeah, blah blah blah. What's the big deal if they run themselves out of business? Just like in the post dot bomb era, a successful company, with a patient (aka actual, profitable) business plan will emerge to replace them.
ntil they make something that pay's me to use it they will never EVER hurt my VOIP system.
Mine is 100% free, I have at least 6 nodes throughout the united states that all I do is pick up line 2 in my house and dial to connect ot the other nodes for free.
and yes it's as good or better than the telephone service using really low cost Creative VoiP blasters and fobbit.
voip will be around as long as there are people willing to use it and have access to the hardware. and no I dont care to dial out to a landline.
Since when does competitive price slashing drive whole sectors out of business? The ones that have a better business model and do things more efficiently will survive, others won't.
Mind you, however, this is true where these businesses aren't competing against a monopoly which can undercut prices at their loss. In either way though, there is at least one company left providing the service of the sector.
-bm
IMHO what will drive most of the VoIP carriers out of business is not the low prices but the service moving into the business, bypassing the middleman. Cisco et al ad nauseum offer VoIP hardware. It's all a matter of time.
Trolling is a art,
run US out of 'business'?
it's tough to set phonIE badtoll plans based on the 'competition' being free, as in no fauxking felonious billyonerrors involved.
lookout bullow. the daze of the phonIE softwar gangster payper liesense stock markup execrable, is WANing into coolapps/the abyss, at the speed of right (which is so slow at times it is deemed non-existent).
do not be alarmed/fooled any further.
The problem with VOIP service providers is that from a technical point of view they are redundant. Skype is currently demonstrating this point in a very convincing way (good quality connection, convenient lookup service, 0$). So anyone depending on charging their customers for this is going to have some revenue problems in the near future.
The only reason you would need an actual service provider is to connect to 'legacy' telephone networks or to offer services like voicemail. Once the traditional telecom providers figure out that there is a market for this kind of thing, they'll be in an excellent position to offer that kind of services.
Jilles
Nope, but it could put the commercial service providers out of business.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
But if a company can't sustain their lower prices, they'll go out of business, which is a BAD THING.
Although, if enough go out of business, the remainder will have more customers and make more money, which is a GOOD THING.
Of course, if there's too little competition, they'll raise prices, which is a BAD THING.
Still, they can't raise them more than ordinary phone rates, which is a GOOD THING.
I've lost count, but I think this is a GOOD THING.
The Law of Falling Bodies
Yes, they'll run themselves out of business. The "winner" will probably be some free open source software. I was thinking of investing in these companies, because they're clearly the wave of the future, then thought better of it.
It still leaves the issue of how to pay for maintaining the internet.
I always imagined that at some point someone would come up with a standard cheap widget that everyone could plug into their POTS jack which would enable a distributed P2P style of VoIP system - Sure, sometimes you might have to wait a few minutes to dial out on your voice line while its in use by the commons, but its a small price to pay if you get to dial anywhere in VoIP or POTS land. These centralized services remind me of Napster - centralized services, legislatable out of existence.
It won't be competition that drives a market away, it is excessive regulation, government mandated monopolies, or a lack of desire for that service or product by the purchasing public.
I doubt that people will lose the desire to use VoIP, so that third occurence is unlikely. But government overregulating, or enforcing a company's "right" to be the sole provider of the service, both could happen (and probably will). I see ads on TV all the time for "$40 a month unlimited phone service!" but I know the last time I had such a deal, I paid $50 for the service, and $35 or more for all the government taxes and fees on top of it.
It is ridiculous.
I dumped my wired phone service because of these fees, and I am about to dump my cell phone service for the same reason. I have enough IP connectivity wherever I am that that I will happily switch to a VoIP company that allows me to transport my Wi-Fi based phone to any network and immediately get connectivity. But when they start getting taxed heavily, I'll move on to the next format.
Honestly, 80% of my communications have moved to instant messaging of some kind. Its loggable, it takes thought to write messages, and I can communicate with 5 seperate conversations at once. I used to use almost 3000 minutes a month on my cell phone, now I am down to 1000 minutes, but I send probably 10,000 text messages to various people.
I'm betting many of you will eventually drop the over-taxed, over-regulated services for ones that get the work done faster, cheaper, and with fewer government intrusions.
Why is this unsustainable? Those rates aren't all that amazing.
I checked out Packet8 and I noticed that even after paying twenty bucks a month calls from the US to Taiwan are still five cents a minute. That's not so special.
Using a calling card and a modem to auto-dial I can quite conveniently call to the States from Taiwan for about twelve cents a minute and there's no monthly charge at all. If you're going to talk for less than a few hours a month, that's still cheaper.
Let's see, twenty bucks, I'd have to call the US at least four each hours a month just to reach the minimum payment.
So apparently unsustainable telecoms plans have already been around for a long time.
Having relatives in Norway and an avid user of iChat with iSight I can tell you that this has reduced our telphone bill by a huge amount. Once others catch on VoIP and video services are going to go mental...
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
is the emergence of high-speed internet providers jumping into the ring. My cable network recently got upgraded to a pretty decent speed and while chatting with a technician I found out that the company will soon be offering VOIP package that will be less than our current Phone company. Hmmmm.
Ten times as many features, less price, all in one package. Good bye Verizon! Your lack of DSL in my area, disturbs me.
Sig it.
About ten years ago, mobile phones were "only for people that make money by talking with people any time, any place". Eventually (in the U.S.) at least, the pager was replaced by the mobile phone. Now, mobile phones are so cheap and convenient, people are using them to replace their land-lines. With the popularity of the internet, broadband rollout also had to occur so people didn't have to dial-in. That being said, the VoIP business is slowly gaining acceptance. John Dvorak from PC Magazine wrote an article about how his Vonage service manages to find him wherever he is, as long as he takes his Cisco phone adapter to a hotel that has broadband. So, once again, we see a potential market driven by frequent travelers that will weed out less stable companies, while strengthening stronger companies to make a market affordable for casual users.
------
There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.
When Costco is selling phonecards for long distance at 2.9 cents a minute, then we're not that far from long distance and local calls blending together.
For most people, for $20, you can get almost 10 hours of long distance. I suspect that 10 hours will carry most people's long distance needs for several months.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I'm the president of an business only ISP and we've been looking at adding voice services for 4 1/2 years. We sell select office buildings where each tenant gets separately firewalled service. I was offered wholesale long distance last year by Worldcom for an insanely low rate of about 1/10th of a US cent per minute. Yes this was to be tied to a voice circuit terminated in a colo we were already it. So for about US$250 per month and US$0.00014 per minute in excess of 500,000 minutes, it's easy to be able to afford long distance bunding even without VOIP for long distance. Even if that's about 1/5 the number of minutes in a 30 day month, it's kind of like bandwidth; a T-1 goes a long long way for a lot of people especially if you minimize bandwidth usage.
Couple that with a soft phone switch like Asterisk with it's pseudo-TDM devices and you've got an incredibly inexpensive solution. Your real costs are advertising and support, not long distance.
Qwest has been selling unlimited in state and out of state long distance for $19.99 for almost a year now. I have been quite happy as my phone bill is now NEVER over $60 US unless I choose to call international. This is not new ... anyone that would degrade thier service to use voip for this when they can do it on their land line is crazy.
Use one of the 2.9 cent phone cards. They don't have a monthly fee. I know BigZoo's monthly $0.75 isn't much, but $0.00 is better.
There is no sign up and no credit card needed for a phone card. I currently use a MCI 625 minute $20 card. It's rechargable or replacable.
Ok to give credit where credit is due, you can use the service cheaper for some international calling, but I don't call overseas, so a domestic card does just fine.
The truth shall set you free!
Okay so all the dumb companies that sell a product below cost will go under.
The companies that sell at a sustainable rate will survive.
In perfect competition, there is no profit. We're getting pretty close for long distance.
The moment end-to-end encryption and authentication is enabled, either via tunnels or by just encrypting the IP payload, no authority trying to assert control over VoIP will be able to identify one application verses another e.g., VoIP verses HTTP verses SMTP.
They will have to either ban encryption, or ban all applications, which is the equivalent of banning the Internet.
Deploying encryption in this manner will actually restore the Internet to its original design - an application agnostic network, whose sole job is to just make a best effort to deliver bits between the hosts at the edges. Only the hosts should know and will know what applications the Internet is being used for.
The technology already exists, albeit in early forms :
This will also obselete firewalls, proxy servers, NAT, and any other devices that perform applications processing within the Internet. The only applications processing devices left will be those at the edges. Security, aka firewalling for example, will be deployed on each edge device.
Steve Bellovin (one of the Wily Hacker authors) wrote about distributed firewalls in 1999, here : Distributed Firewalls
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
A friend of mine said his company (which he owns) charges $8.00 per month and $0.03 per minute anywhere in the US. He's expanding...
Every VoIP service I've ever seen requires the customer to use their provided phone, which is usually provided free but is nevertheless not the phone I want. Instead of providing a free fone, the VoIP services should provide a free converter: ethernet on one end, rj-11 POTS on the other. I could then hang a splitter on the other end and use my portable phone, etc.
Why has this not already happened? IMHO VoIP will not be competitive until then. Until I can replace my whole three-phone system with VoIP, it's useless.
I would not worry about VoIP operators surviving or not surviving (unless you are invested in them). People don't want VoIP, per se, they want to make cheap phone calls to their friends, family, business associates, etc. VoIP is only a means to that end.
If you look at telco equipment makers, like Lucent, one big new feature is ICD (Internet Call Diversion) that cross diverts standard voice calls on to the internet. CLECs, ILECs, PSTNs can buy this stuff to merge POTS and VoIP and offer free local voice service and low-priced long-distance that just happens to use VoIP.
I'm sure VoIP will become widely adopted and be almost invisible because it will be the most cost-effective way to carry voice communications. Whether any of the current VoIP service providers survive is irrelevant.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It sounds paranoid, but as a post-9/11 New Yorker I haven't switched to VoIP because I don't want to lose my enhanced 911, which displays my address at the P.D. as soon as I call. Of course, the VoIP provider would have my address too. Has anyone heard anything about whether VoIP supports E911? Thanks.
The trick isn't whether Vonage et al. survive. VoIP is making some major inroads in large corporations - replacing old analog PBX equipment. Just because delivery of voice services to homes via IP could fail doesn't mean IP telephony has failed. It just means that those companies had a poor business model.
Besides, there's nothing stopping you from having your POTS line come in to an IP gateway and running all your internal phones off the IP network. 1 network card in you gateway is alot cheaper than an FXS port per internal line.
A company called SIPphone offers the phone for a one time price. With this, they provide a VoIP number directory listed for life at no continuing cost. Calling cards to reach POTS lines are cheap(3.7 cents at SAMS, better at others).
Too bad Vonage has so much in hidden fees; $30 to activate and $40 to discontinue service. Is there a price war? I think not.
Who is pay and why do you belong to him? Some kind of S/M thing?
I opted for VoicePulse because they have a really extensive web interface that lets you do all kinds of neato stuff, like call filtering and emailed voicemail notifications.
The plan I'm on now is approx $15/mo, which is unlimited local with 200 minutes long distance. They offer a $45/mo plan with unlimited national long distance.
The call quality is *very* good, and there's no latency at all. Mind you I've had it for less than 24 hours at this point. I even started a huge full throttle file download and there was no perceivable degradation.
I guess the downside of this is that voicepulse only provides support via email. And I don't know if this is just a fluke or if this is going to be common, but I can't seem to make calls for up to 2 minutes after having just come off of a call (incoming calls get busy signal?).
I'm seriously considering dropping my landline.
Simply, no. Just because one company is using an open-source designed SS doesn't bridge the massive logical divide that has open-source enabling competition in the phone space. Stop the Slashdot pandering. What's enabling competition is a demand by customers for cheap, 'good enough' phone service that offers an alternative to the LECs (who are wont to keep prices inflated and have notoroiously lacking customer service) coupled with the increasing ubiquity of 'good enough' quality broadband connections at similarly good pricing.
If the SS in question is a bit cheaper than the Cisco/Siemens/Avaya designs...okay, yeah, that might enable some startups to get in the game for less skin. But, IMO, that last statement was nothing more than reckless hyberbole, and barks up the wrong tree.
As a part way step it would be cool if the VoIP phone wasn't actually a phone but just a device that "lite-up" regular land lines in your house.
ie a VoIP POTS "modem". Then you could use any wireless phone and the cost of the device would be less.
Frontier just started offering unlimited long distance for $15 for their "choices" customers.
For $80 per month + taxes ($94 or so total) I get phone service with all the bells & whistles (including distinctive ringing for 2 numbers), unlimited long distance, and ADSL (3 Mbps down / 384 kbps up). I'm very happy with their service too.
"3. Company A's business plan was unsustainable. They are bankrupt.
4. Company B is fucked too, because the consumers forced them to react to Company A's unsustainable business model."
You stopped too soon:
5. Company B realizes that selling services or goods at a loss is unsustainable.
6. Company B realizes that company A is out of business.
7. Company B raises prices.
8. Profit!
My local telco (Bellsouth) offers unlimited long distance to all 50 states for $24.99 a month. I don't use long distance much, but my roommate does, and he was paying upwards of $85 / month with our previous ATT service.
I have been using p8 for the last two months as my primary phone. The service is pretty sweet and costs are fixed. Not having to pay Bell South saves me about 10 bucks a month without figuring in long distance. When long distance is added to the figure the savings go up.
The quality is pretty good but the 100msec delay takes getting used to
I was just wondering if anyone knows how the VoIP calls are routed to the PSTN.
Does, say, Packet8 have a gateway on each continent that hooks into the PSTN.
So when I call USA -> France it might use the nearest gateway in the UK? Just wondering.
Nufone
StealthTele
My potato gun was confiscated by the United Nations. They said I wasn't allowed to have weapons of mash destruction.
Phone cards usually carry a hefty connection fee -- particularly if you call from a pay-phone. I've seen $5 cards that charge $0.75 per call. At $0.01 per minute, that's a loss of 1:15 of talk time. That is not acceptable.
t'nera semordnilap
I am a very happy user of Vonage. The savings is a lot more than just the charge for long-distance. My real expense came in the form of my local dial-tone service. I live in a suburb of St. Louis. My fees before ever dialing a long-distance call were about $60/mo. That got me:
*Local Dial-Tone
*Metro Area Calling (in other words if I didn't want to be charged long-distance for calling outside of my immediate township such as neighboring suburbs or St. Louis city {keeping in mind I am only about 15 miles outside the city} I had to have this).
*Caller ID
*Call waiting (no call waiting ID)
I could get cheap long-distance anywhere I wanted, but that wasn't an issue to me. I already had broadband so the move to Vonage (and the disconnect of my local service) saves me a bloody fortune and I get unlimited long-distance as an added bonus.
ER
This is what they call ATA devices, and grandstream makes one for 70ish dollars, and cisco makes one with 2 lines for 200ish dollars.
Grandstream also makes a 70 dollar ip phone (aka barbiephone)
My potato gun was confiscated by the United Nations. They said I wasn't allowed to have weapons of mash destruction.
We've been using VoIP at work for about 3 years now. Granted we are not using it for personal long distance calls and such. For us, it is an extension of our internal PBX system. Using VoIP we have been able to connect our office phone systems on both coasts of the U.S. and allow the management and sales teams to connect to our PBX from home. VoIP beats the hell out of the conventional means for achieving these tasks. I think we had to spend about $5K on hardware initially and there are no recurring monthly costs (unless you count the T1s which the VoIP system runs on but we had those prior to implementing VoIP).
I just read my phone bill. $49.95 from AT&T for all you can eat local and long distance calling. $20 in supposedly mandated taxes. I did a little digging and found out from a friend that carriers often mark up the taxes and pocket the profit. My question is how good is voice over IP? Is it good enough to yank out my existing line and make the jump?
-- $G
Unfortunately, when price wars erupt the best technology and service rarely wins out. Case in point, the explosion of dial-up Internet access in the 90s. The big winner here certainly not the best provider (anyone who thinks AOL was the 'best' step closer so I can smack some sense into you).
Same with airfares, poeple whine and moan that service sucks, but then they go ahead an shop for the lowest fare regardless of service.
The unwashed masses will do just about anything to save a $
VOIP isn't carrying those burdens, and is often parasitic on the phone company physical plant for wires. So there is a lot of good reason for the phone companies to be unhappy with interlopers that might mess up their regulated economic model - which they can't change by law.
It is one thing to say the RIAA/MPAA should die, because their economic model isn't guaranteed; but the phone company model IS guaranteed by the law that gives the monopoly.
I don't think I have any problems with VOIP provision that does not interconnect to the regular network. At the point there are gateways, it seems like those become perfectly appropriate points of regulation.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
What is important in this discussion is "The Last Mile" That is the run from the pole to the subscribers home. Ma-Bell (Verizon or your local monopoly) gets 40% of the bill for that. IE: Verizon owns the line, and the last mile. Your AT&T phone bill is $100 a month. Verizon gets $40 of that. Should you need a trouble call, AT&T foots the bill for the Verizon tech to roll is truck to your house, regardless of what the resolution to your problem was. That is why VOIP can make money with low prices. There is no "Last Mile" No 40% cut that has to go to some other company. 40% is a huge amount to add to your profit margin, or deduct from costs depending on how you look at it.
please, the mobile phone market has been having price wars for years - are you trying to tell me that mobile phones are going away as well then? or internet connectivity for that matter?
i'm sure VOIP will follow both those trends by consolidation and purchasing to form some BIGVOIPS who can utilise larger user bases to generate profit of volume of calls rather than the small guys making slim margins with fewer clients.
Using VoIP instead of the current PTNS system makes it cheaper to install/use. There is no copper lines to maintain. As as VoIP phone company, you just have to have a robust high bandwith connection to the internet and have local dialout/dialin lines in the areas that you have want to have local service in. I have been using Vonage for a couple months now and love it. Whenever I get a voicemail, it pages my cellphone to let me know that I have a new voice mail and it tells me from which number (so most of the time I can tell who it is from). Also whenever my VoIP box can not be seen by Vonage and I get a new call, it automatically forwards the call to a different number (like my cell). I also like that I can listen to my voicemail via a webpage with no plugins. None these options are available via a "Baby Bell" company using their PTNS network.
So until the "Baby Bell"s can offer these the VoIP services will have a niche market if not more.
Scott
Scott
janitor
sdn website family
email: scott at sboss dot net
we've had unlimited long distance for 20$ CDN for about 6 years now... I don't see any problem with our telecoms... but then again, they're all crown corporations, so I'm probably paying to make up the difference regardless.
It's already here with Packet8...
I have no land line, only broadband and P8.. & use the cordless phone with p8's cute and quite small packet phone interface.
The phone companies should be running scared. I'm paying about $15/month less than standard 'local-only' service from the phone company, and getting unlimited national long distance, received calls plus pretty cheap international to boot. I do call international a lot, it doesn't take much to make the numbers very favorable to VoIP. Anyone remember the $0.60/min international call from the phone company..
The dinosaurs ought to die.
I don't buy that $20/month is not sustainable. They'll make up a lot in international time.
Of course this model is all only valid for a few years anyway, after which broadband and free voiceIP boxes should take over for people who want to save. Phone service will turn into a box you buy once.
All phone companies will and should die off eventually. The model of the network infrastructure costs being spread out over all network users is better anyway.
-- I speak only for myself.
It is the local telephone companies that are driving the VOIP price war.
For example here in California, SBC has instituted new pricing that matches VOIP. These are not advertised rates, but if you call and say you are cancelling to switch to VOIP, you get offerred a new rate that matches VOIP.
For example SBC now offers unlimited local and long distance calling for $29.95 a month.
VoIP Blaster review
fobbit
InnoSphere
Is this router/voip still active for service?
For those that don't know, it is a 4 port rouiter switch with a dial out only voip (seamles for an analog phone) built in. I own one but the voip quit and I am far too busy (2 other phone lines active plus cell) to have looked into it.
OneSuite
What is the use of a P2P app for VoIP? I don't understand that aspect of Skype. When I call a friend, I don't need to go through a bunch of other people, I just need his IP address. Are the "P2P" aspects just using a buzzword, or are they distributing searches for other people or what?
Until the emergency dispatch centers and the VoIP providers find a good, consistent, work around for 911 calls, this may prove a serious stumbling block for widespread adoption. While some (Vonage for example) allow you to register your location and transmit it to the dispatch center, others don't. I'm not a fan of regulation in general, but this is one issue that really needs to be addressed by the industry and if not by the industry, then by the government. Paul
Are VoIP Blasters are back in production?
I thought Cre/\tive had end-of-lifed that product! They still don't have it on their home page - though the gamersdepot review is recent and claims they're available for twenty bux.
What happened?
(And why, after the hooraw here on slashdot when Cre/\tive canceled them just as open-source software was becoming available to drive them, didn't we hear about them coming back?)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I have broadband cable internet from Comcast anyway so I tried out Vonage and found that I was saving lot more than the same features with the local Bell companies (ATT, SBC, etc). I pay $25/month and get like Voicemail, 911 Dialing, 3 way calling, call forwarding, call blocking, call waiting, the whole shebang plus 5 local area codes. Used to be calling from one suburbs of detroit to another was local toll calls. But its all free included as local for me. Plus I get 500 minutes of long distance to US and Canada and 3.9 cents after the 500 min. Who can beat this. yeah maybe Bigzoo or some other calling cards who use VOIP anyway but the hassle of dialing access numbers, pin numbers etc is not worth the extra penny. Plus the phone number I have is portable. I choose a 248 area code for my convenience for my friends and families in an area where the Bell companies had given me a 586 area code. Also, another nice thing is when I was in a monthlong project in MA, I took the device with me to a hotel where there are braodband connection and guess what, people were calling me on my 248 and I was recieving them in MA in my hotel or vice versa. I can also take this device anywhere in the world and just connect it to a broadband and bingo, I will be making free local calls to Detroit from Japan or Asia. This is working out really good for me. It's worth $25/Month for all the features.
I asked:
Are VoIP Blasters are back in production?
Then I called Cre/\tive's direct sales store number and they seem to think they're not in production.
Curiouser and couriouser.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
When will I be able to connect from my Smartphone (mobile) over the air, via my VoIP service, to the Asterix PBX on my home LAN, to use my homebrew multimedia conferencing SW in a call to 3 other POTS callers?
--
make install -not war
Telephony tends to be a regulated environment, with the network provider controlling everything up to the service edge. This regulation both ensures call quality and provides a means whereby taxes can be imposed. It also forms a framework which keeps innovation out of the environment and puts start-ups (like the CLECS) at a disadvantage. In a telephony environment, all of the services are provided network-side of the line card. You can put any color Princess Phone(TM) on your line, or strap-on a feature-limited answering machine (or even a modem) but there's very little in the way of phone network features (call forwarding, 3-way, etc) you can "roll for yourself" in the telephony environment.
Telephony is taxed (Universal Service Fund) and consequently also rolled-out nationwide to everyone, which makes it a platform. It's uncommon to hear of anyone who can't get (land-line) phone service if they want it since the LEC's have to provide it.
And with Telephone, there's the assumption that each person on the network can be tied back to an individual subscriber line. This makes it possible for things like 911 service to work in a fairly supportable fashion.
Contrast this with voice services like the VOIP Vonage offers. Currently, it is regarded as an information service (making it unlike Telephony) and therefore not encumbered by the Universal Service Fund tax. But that also means it's not available everywhere (it can't be considered a universal platform for applications). Plus, it would be possible for a Vonage subscriber to build a custom client which provides services Vonage can't (or doesn't want to) offer, like conference calling and such. If they lose control of the service edge (very likely, IMHO, because the endpoint box is in the home) they may well find that Vonage becomes the preferred hangout for VOIP-based telemarketers (who better than they can make the best use of call-anywhere-for-nothing flat rate pricing) or perhaps the next generation SPAMBlaster with .MP3 extensions.
For people who only need voice services, Vonage is worth looking into. For people who need the other aspects which are more telephony-related, a land line is more appropriate.
Cell phones offer us a good example of a technology which started out as a "voice" service but is becoming more like a telephony servicce. It used to be that a cell phone connection offered only limited availability (with drop outs in no-service areas) and that the voice quality was less than acceptable at times. Now the coverage is increasing, voice quality better and even things like 911 are supported. But this came at the expense of USF tax, closed terminals (Are there any answering machines for cell-phone subscribers?) and increasing prices.
There's another kind of VOIP we hear about; Network owners like Sprint and MCI are replacing parts of their network core with VOIP infrastructure. For the portion of their network which exists solely within the service edge, you'll never see it, so don't worry about it. If they allow access to their VOIP infrastructure from beyond their service edge (unimaginable, but let's run with it for a moment anyway) they'll likely see the same problems with VOIP-spammers and VOIPhreakers which could bring Vonage down. It could get rather messy.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
I don't mind the 75 cents. I like the features that come with Bigzoo, particularly (God, I hate the names), Pinskip and BlastIt.
Pinskip lets you identify certain phone numbers that do not need to enter your pin. For example, your cellphone or home phone number. Call Bigzoo, and it chirps up immediately with "please enter the number you'd like to call". BlastIt is a "speed-dial", though it's a bit clunky.
I would caution against putting your work/dorm number in Pinskip, though, if you have to go through a PBX that does not provide your actual phone number. I worked at a university and put in my work number. Some lucky student got to call their boyfriend back-home for about 3 hours on my dime.
The only other thing I'd like to see at Bigzoo is the ability to register your credit card and have it automatically bill a fixed amount when your balance reaches a certain level. My prepaid cellphone does that, and I think it's great!
What's enabling competition is a demand by customers for cheap, 'good enough' phone service that offers an alternative to the LECs (who are wont to keep prices inflated and have notoroiously lacking customer service) coupled with the increasing ubiquity of 'good enough' quality broadband connections at similarly good pricing.
Fair enough, but with a virtualized infrastructure and broadband, you can start thinking of adding other services as well, such as standardized videophones, cellphones with wifi builtin, and all sorts of interesting crap.
Price is the big pusher in this, but don't forget flexibility and open standardization...
Vonage so far is neat, but unfortunately it only supports the ATA186 adapter. How about supporting software phones, maybe even a java-based web phone, so I can place calls anywhere I can find a computer with a soundcard? I'd love to be able to make phone calls on my sound-equipped PDA when in wifi range.. Or a battery (or ether) -powered ATA equivalent, portable for use when travelling.. That'd be teh kewl for business travellers wishing to keep their extension wherever they are..
Perhaps with a per-device charge, as they have with extra lines, to cover the increased utilization of their flat-rate plan and tech support.
Look here - It's still in beta, but it exists.
Blah, a VoIP price war would do wonders for the industry, I mean just look at the DSL price wars a few years back. That lead to lower and lower prices and more and more service, eventually to the point where only massive conglomo-corps were the only ones left because they had the money to bankroll DSL service till the little guys went broke. Oh, wait... I guess that was the opposite of my point.
Oh well, at least the DSL price wars left really all the big telcoms as the only DSL providers, and VoIP is something the telcoms don't want to exsist anyhow so they can keep their strangle-hold monopoly on services, so when they jump in and play the same game this time, and all the upstarts go bankrupt, it will leave all the Bells running VoIP services, and... oh, crap.
You'll have to have DSL or a cable modem, of course.
what's needed is that these companies need quanity... quanity of users. they offer quality, but they need quanity in order to start making a progit.. if they have a million suscribers, then they dont have to worry about going out of business.. what's really hurting voip is the fact that it isnt too popular, nor do most people realise it exists.
most people think of yahoo voice chat when they think of calling people over the internet.
what these providers need to do is start an advertising push, get people out in public to talk casually about the benefits of VOIP, etc, and how simple it is, how you can get a special phone or software for your computer.
that's how these companies are going to stay alive..
it's like a game I played on an apple IIe once.
where if you sold the apples/lemonade too low, with an average number of people (eg, your neighbors, passer-bys.. etc..) you'd lose profit... you sell to high, your customers will go elsewhere.. what's needed is a quality service, at a low rate, and plenty of advertising. and the rate doesnt have to be as low as your competitors, if you offer a much better service, it sells itself.. that's how companies like earthlink and speakeasy still run.. offer things are a low, but not too low price, you get great quality, people buy into it.
so
1. quality
2. reasonable low price
3. convincing advertising
4. quanity
5. PROFIT!
I guess I debunked that mysterious missing step.
that's how these companies will suffice.
if I ever start my own VOIP service (I might do it) I'd take those steps into consideration.
I'm considering getting a voip phone and some service to call some of my friends overseas and out of state, voip is a great technology, it will reduce the need for most standard telecommunications, or force them to lower their rates.
Just out of curiosity, what is the other $40 a month for?
VoIP isn't next generation; it's a temporary situation until landlines are phased out more completely.
Everyone I know uses a cell phone nearly exclusively. As soon as international calls are part of the plan at a free/economical rate, landlines/long distance (and voip) are completely done for.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
AT&Tws offers a US$5pm plan and a US$0.15 rate to the UK. Not bad. When it's no monthly and $0.05 to the UK (to match Vonage) I'll drop VoIP.
You can get an unlimited calling package from Vonage, that includes Canada. Additionally, you are not burdened by these alleged taxes and right to use us tax. You also can monitor phone activity online including seeing what you will be billed for according to usage. You also have a world portable phone where anywhere with a broadband connection it's still a local call to people it was before. For the cherry on top, you can choose to keep your existing phone number and add virtual area codes to make it cheaper and easier to keep in contact with people in other places in the US. The quality is very near an overpriced POTS that lines the pockets of a greedy CEO for their oh so needed 7.4 million dollar holiday bonus. My only issue lasted a mere 24 hours, and that was an echo in the phone which may be caused by the phone. Since my issue resolved itself in time, I assume it was routing tables being updated for the new data stream to my Cisco phone switch(which is very small). Take all this that AT&T won't do for you and add all the features they offer to really jack your bill up and you have a very affordable communications package that you really cannot tell the difference in regards to quality. If you have a real broadband connection and DS bandwidth to spare you can max out quality and _maybe_ use about 150Kbps of your bandwidth.
VoIP has been one of the better decisions I have made, and should price wars drive down the prices and keep the quality...sweet. If you have a reliable ISP and a real broadband connection with bandwidth to spare, I advise to switch over to VoIP. I have been a customer for 3 months now, and finally don't hate paying my phone feeling like I got ripped off and taken to the cleaners. If your only reservation is quality, I would say visit the website and read up. I am not sure, but they may have a short money back time period to make sure you are happy with how the service works with your connection. Only drawback, your VoIPhone is totally net dependent but thats what the cell is for when emergencies come around.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
While areas still exist that either do not have VoIP or even broadband access then there is still a viable market. The issue is whether companies are stupid or not. Very few entrepreneurs are making decisions these days, instead it is brain-dead MBA mentality types that do not trully understand that economy is dynamic. Those entrepreneurs will however pop up when there is a need... that is when prices are driven so low that it is no longer a good business model for big cities but before the MBA's take notice of untapped markets.
Nothing to worry about, IOW
i am no expert in these matters, but wouldnt it be 'where you have to wait until there is at least one available connection local to where you want to call from your VoIP network to POTSland'? i mean, there are maximum capacities for a lot of things...satilite communication, cell phone networks, atlantic-telephone-cables...with enough people local to who you want to call, there will be more chances that you will have an open line. sure there will be times when local POTS systems are unreachable. but this is only until more universal acceptance/bigger measures can be taken...
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
a lot of people used analog cell phones, and a LOT of people use chordless phones...(trust me, for the past year and a half i've been taking orders at a pizza delivery shop...and probably a good 7/8 calls come in from either chordless phones or cellphones... and about 1/4 of the cellphones i've seen are either tdma or plain cdma(?).
you do however raise a good point about calling-from-POTS-To-VoIP...which i would have never of thought of considerring i have never really owned a phone line and the closest people can get to contacting me is showing up in #fej in irc.othersideirc.net on a IRC Client
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I really need to be able to talk to someone in
Madagascar
- cheaply.
But how do I go about finding a provider?
A blog I run for the wealth
isn't as price competitive as it could be. Depending on what features you want it has a range of $25-50/mo. For the top of the line $50 package you only get 5 hours of long distance calling. Keep in mind that this is above and beyond the $60 you are already paying for broadband. Contrast that with Vonnage which has all bells and whistles standard (caller id, call fowarding, etc) and UNLIMITED long distance in the US and Canada for about $35.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
http://www.teamspeak.com/ See also buddy phone (google search will find it)
Compare with free services that don't connect to the PSTN, that is.
A free service that doesn't connect to the PSTN is a toy. A geek plaything with minimal utility and no chance of ever supplanting regular POTS from the local wire monopoly for anybody with realistic needs.
On the other hand, services that do interconnect with the PSTN are already, at their present price points, cheaper than equivalent service from non-VOIP providers, and at least some of them are mature enough to be effective replacements for POTS.
I don't have a POTS line at my house anymore. All my voice service at home is provided by Vonage. And SBC/Ameritech gets not a penny of my money. No service that's free today or ever likely to be free in the future will be able to provide that.
On top of that, they'll give me a local number in any city where I have a lot of people who might want to call me, for a small extra fee. This has already made my life (and my business) incomparably easier.
How is this offtopic? It very clearly says VOIP in the subject line.
The whole idea is for the relacement of your expensive home long distance carrier. Pay phones are another matter. The calling card is taped to the wall next to the kitchen phone, not carried about. I have another one locked in my drawer at work.
With the primary use definition out of the way, a card is still less than half the price of the cheapest telemarketer offer for long distance. None of the telemarketer offers were free of any monthly charges. They can't compete with a phone card.
The truth shall set you free!