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VoIP Gets A Big Backer And Another Lawsuit

Posted by timothy on from the be-suspicious-of-buggywhip-makers dept.

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."

4 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. competition? by gid13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, it seems to me that this at the very least provides some valuable competition to the phone monopolies. Unfortunately, capitalism being what it is, it seems fairly likely to me that either VoIP or phone (probably VoIP) will eventually destroy the other, and unless we get more competition in the ISP market we'll just end up with another monopoly.

    I could be wrong, but I think that one of capitalism's biggest problems is industries that require a large infrastructure. I know that socialist approaches to most things tend to be less efficient (due to the lack of competition), but in a case like this I think it's better, since to get REAL competition we need multiple infrastructures reaching every single house, the cost of which of course would still get passed on to the consumer.

  2. Nobody wins yet... by cmowire · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I don't think the analysis is correct. Right now, nobody has a true upper hand.
    • Cable ISPs have no experience running a teleco, but they have a marginal technical advantage over a non-ISP VoIP provider simply because of better network routing
    • ILEC DSL ISPs (the phone company) can sell you a pure DSL connection without canabalizing their existing market simply because they will use VoIP instead of a splitter.
    • CLEC DSL ISPs (Covad) benefit simply because they don't need the phone company do to the splitter anymore.
    • Pure VoIP providers benefit because they have no fear of canabalization and they've already started. With the CLECs, they share the benefit of being folks who generally don't have people who have been mad at them since the 80s when the cable was always out of service and ma bell was busy screwing you over.
    --
    Gentoo Sucks
  3. Re:WRONG by line.at.infinity · · Score: 5, Insightful
    raisinets wrote:
    I work for the AT&T telco division....
    You were working for Apple 2 hours ago, for Honda 2 days ago. That's quite an amazing feat.
  4. POTS won't die for a while... by pdaoust007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As exited as I am to see Internet services such as VoIP become mainstream, part of me still thinks that POTS will still be here for a while.

    A couple of things to consider:

    - You need broadband and not everybody has it, can get or will ever want it
    - Cable and DSL (especially cable according ot my own experience) are definitely not as stable as POTS. They are next to useless when power is out unless you AND you proveider have UPS
    - Emergency services are still an issue with VoIP. I'm expecting the first headline about someone dying because 911 wasn't available on VoIP anytime now.
    - There is still no end to end QoS on VoIP. Home gateways are still too dumb to prioritize VoIP trafficover your Pr0n traffic.