Slashdot Mirror
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."
I agree that Time Warner (and other, especially cable based ISPs) will have a huge competative advantage over third-party providers. But, in my area TWC is going to be offering VOIP in early next year, but they want to charge 39.95/mo for service that I can get for 25 bucks from vonage and they won't even be offering voice mail initially!
I think government and telcos need to realized that VOIP can and shouldn't be regulated anymore than any internet-based service. Governments need to find other revenue streams than regulatory fees....just my $.02
My office is looking to go to VoIP since we are in the planning stages of a move. The estimated cost savings is around $6000 per month for less than 150 people. The drawback is we would be ditching our entire phone system (and phones) and purchasing new equipment (we are talking about $60K at least). No decision has been made yet.
The other added benefit is that I would be responsible for phone traffic, also, in that it would be routed through the normal network. More job security...heh.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
But isn't "short-range long-distance revenue" an oxymoron?
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.
So when your cable service is interrupted, you can't call 'em to tell 'em you lost your TV signal! Think of the money they'll save on customer no-service!
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
Whenever there is a storm, my cable goes out before the power ever does. Cable also tends to go out at random times. Why would I want to change to VOIP when I'm not insured that cable will always be available -- especially since a POTS system is much, much, much more reliable.
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
I'm not convinced that cable really has an advantage over the phone company. The cable company doesn't get 7*24 at all...
If it rains, we have an outage.
If the weather's hot, we have an outage.
If our cat farts within ten feet of the modem, we have an outage.
Yes, I like my cable modem for the download speed, but I won't give them my phone service anytime soon. Calling tech support is often an exercise in futility.
BTW - I have no land line, my wife and I use wireless only. It's not as reliable as a land line, but it's actually cheaper and works pretty damn well.
Alan.
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.
Yes, I'd like to think that the American business model can be summarized in one paragraph as well.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
I think Cheech would like VoIP. I mean tihnk about it who doesn't cannibus tehir own pots or place cannibus in POTS or something.
When I finish smoking tihs doob I'll come back to this post dude.
MoFscker
Gentoo Sucks
If a baby bell gets together with local broadcast stations to distribute free over-air digital tuners, cable operators will lose their core business. They reached max penetration several years ago and have been casting about for revenue sources. One thing they tried was an alliance with broadcasters for central services. It was damaged by nonlinear insertion and cheap storage availability.
Take the number of stations within sixty miles of you and double it. That's the approximate number of sources of free programming. The advertising revenue will come back into the community too. You can subscribe to specialized stuff on broadband. Wrestling, Celebrity sports, E!, all the shit you so desperately need.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
WIth a cell phone, you are automatically "passed on" the next cell when you move. With WLL, you are locked into your service area.
In a small business you typically need lots of phone lines. VoIP offers you several for a fraction of the cost. It costs about $100 per line and with 12 lines that's $1,200 per month. VoIP offers significantly cheaper prices.
I'm not sure if the price difference is really warranted because the technology behind your old-style phones is fairly mature. It seems like they're gouging you out of pure greed because of the monopolistic control phone companies have.
Or local Verizon in my area is about $35 for no-frills nothing service.
Compare that with my cellular verizon service which is about the same price except with voicemail, caller ID, "free" longdistance because they must remain competitive with other cellular carriers.
VoIP is a frightening technology and I would prefer if it was avoided. But when you're a struggling small business and are looking at reversing your cash flow hundreds of dollars per month you really don't have any choice at all.
Taxes that apply to current voice tariffed services do not apply to "data" services the same way.
Since all the carriers are actually carrying most, if not all of their "voice" traffic by the same methods, on the same kind of equipment as "data", there is money to be made carrying voice but calling it data.
Very little infrastructure remains circuit switched and is now packet switched like data. Much of this was driven by the requirements for pumping a bunch of traffic over fiber; WDM, DWDM etc.
Now the efforts are clearly to pave the way for providers to pocket the difference or most of it; this difference being the amounts charged to the customer which are turned over to the government as taxes.
If you pay $100 per month for "voice" services and $30 of that is taxes, and you switch to VOIP for $85 without taxes, you save $15 at the same time the provider makes an additional $15.
And this doesn't even address the investment tax credits and "cost of doing business" deductions the providers enjoy for building up the ability to offer new services.
So what we have is a bunch of people angling for position in the inevitable VOIP fray.
Some are clearly innovators.
Some want to be first just to stake a claim for later work.
Some have deep pockets but nothing else to offer. So they are about to expend massive legal fees and efforts to keep others out of the game.
If you can't innovate; Litigate.
The end result will ultimately be that the average customer spends about the same as they do right now. How the fees are assessed will look different, but the bottom line will be pretty much the same.
The providers will then benefit or fail based upon how successful their legal tactics were in creating, sustaining or closing tax loopholes in order to benefit their bottom line.
There is no altruism in the move to VOIP.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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It will be interesting to see how cable companies handle 911 and other emergency services (hospitals, government agencies etc.).
This is really why (aside from reasonable rates for customers) that the Telcos are regulated - and fined heavily if they screw it up.
Dialtone uptimes will be hard to manage for current cable networks - given the current traffic patterns as well as the poor scalability vis-a-vis DSL.
Finally, don't worry about the Telcos; most if not all of them are already leveraging these new technologies in various creative ways to make copper wire a value added proposition into the forseable future. Don't overlook SDSL rollouts over the horizon - and who knows what is on the drawing boards. Given that copper wire touches more homes than cable - who do you think is really in a better position to take advantage of broadband communications of all types in the long term? Who do you think critical government agencies and emergency services are going to trust with their external communications gateways?
I will leave those answers as an exercise for the user...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
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.