VoIP Gets A Big Backer And Another Lawsuit

Ungrounded Lightning writes "Time Warner Cable has announced plans to roll out a VoIP telephone service. I see two implications. First: ISPs providing VoIP phone service have a competitive advantage over third-party VoIP/PSTN providers (such as Vonage), who must ride on top of a separate broadband subscription for the packet transport. This could lead to consolidation of this industry segment in the hands of ISPs. Second: Cable ISPs have an advantage over Telco DSL operations - where a VoIP offering would cannibalize their own POTS and short-range long-distance revenue. This implies rollout on cable providers first, followed by harder times for telcos, long-distance companies, and third parties." chipperdog writes "In this article it is mentioned that the small rural phone companies in North Dakota are filing a complaint against a local VoIP provider, CallSmart. Interesting to see how this one works out, given what happened in Minnesota a few months ago."

Comments

Re:Wireless in Local Loop?

[andy1307]

WIth a cell phone, you are automatically "passed on" the next cell when you move. With WLL, you are locked into your service area.

Cable companies != common carrier. Beware.

[clustercrasher]

It is a little known fact that cable companies were ruled as not common carriers. That means that customers have very little protection from lack of service, privacy issues... Once we allow them to provide phone service without those protections we will erode those rights even further. $20/month for a phone line is a good deal. Do you think that will last if the phone companies are driven under?

VoIP in office setting

[wchao]

We actually use VoIP at my office: www.microoffice.us/slashdot. It works reasonably well and allows us to provide an extremely cost-effective office suite package (office space, phone, high-speed Internet, mail, meeting spaces, etc...) to our customers. Our customers are primarily solo entrepreneurs (e.g., consultants and freelancers) and very small businesses who are price-conscous.

You really have to be careful about the data network though. We have near-dedicated bandwidth from our data provider, which is why quality is good. Forget about trying to serve business class users with VoIP over cable modem or DSL -- the quality goes to hell when someone tries to download a large file. The QoS really has to take place upstream of you (at the point of the bottleneck). Otherwise it doesn't achieve much.

VoIP: No Excise Taxes

[Brown Line]

Don't forget that VoIP has a huge price advantage over "plain old telephone service": it's immune to local excise taxes. Take a look at your phone bill some time and you'll see how much of it goes to your local municipality: those are dollars that can be split between the customer and the carrier.

I'm curious to see what alliances will be formed: local governments and the phone company on the same side for once, against cable providers and possibly the FCC. It could be a real dog fight.

Re:Cost savings with VoIP

[doogles]

But I have seen some of our telecom guys walking around with a phone from Cisco that is an IPPhone when in range of a WAP for our network, and a regular cell-phone otherwise. Pretty sweet.

No you didn't.

The Cisco 7920 Wireless IP Phone does not at this time do anything but 2.4GHz 802.11b. It has no cell phone functionality, although this has been discussed as a possible next-generation product direction (as well as some possible OEM agreements with PDA makers).

This phone is a pretty solid product, albeit a little light on battery life. This comment is ironic, as the original delays on the product (to the tune of about 10 months) while Cisco worked on the battery life.

There are two main competitors in the Wireless IP Space:

• Symbol
  
• Spectralink
  

Re:Cheaper to run, but same quality?

[helzerr]

Talk to your VoIP administrator. There should be an option to turn on sidetone and maybe even an option for "comfort noise" so the phone doesn't sound too quiet when no one is speaking.