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NYT Reviews VoIP: Vonage, Packet8, VoicePulse
securitas writes "The New York Times Technology section reviews VoIP services Vonage, VoicePulse and Packet8. A second article rounds up the competition including VoIP start-ups, cable companies and traditional telcos. The review primarily focuses on Vonage and it's an enlightening review particularly because the reporter isn't a techie. Most interesting is the comment from Vonage's CEO Jeffrey Citron: 'We're not that happy with the level of service today.' The outcome of the review and CEO's comments really do indicate that VoIP is still at the bleeding edge - and not for the average consumer - but the technology is maturing quickly. It will be interesting to see if the telcos do any better with their QoS (quality of service) - which has historically been a critical differentiating factor and competitive advantage - when they introduce their VoIP services in 2004."
The odd thing is that they recommend still keeping a normal phone line.
One reason I can think of is power outages. Normal phones and cell phones usually work during power outages, while you need an UPS to be able to use VoIP when the power is out. I would never rely on VoIP alone when it comes to emergency calls.
Commercial VoIP is an artificial market. By that, I mean that it only has a reason to exist because of a circumstancial state of affairs, the one dictating that commercial phone companies (traditional land-line based phones) are taxed and must maintain their network with the proceed of their sales, while VoIP companies don't pay taxes and rely on people paying their own internet connections.
I mean, apart from the cost of calls, there are precious few technological advantages in placing VoIP calls instead of normal phone calls (I'm just talking about national calls to simplify). If VoIP companies suddenly were taxed or had to pay a fee to internet providers for the extra bandwidth, this "quickly maturing" market would vanish instantly.
In any case, there's little difference between a VoIP company and a phone company : they both use digitally encoding to transport voice, it's just that the latter uses (and pays for) its own dedicated lines, while the other doesn't.
3 things are likely to happen:
- The feds step in and consider VoIP companies as normal phone companies (which they are), and tax them
- VoIP companies are asked to share the cost of maintaining IP infrastructure, in return for the burden they impose on it
- Traditional phone companies start providing "free" internet with their phone services, in which case customers have phone and internet for the same price, nulling VoIP companies' value
In all cases, VoIP companies die.
I don't see how VoIP companies will survive in the long run. They're the product of the fact that the internet is much younger, therefore much less regulated and taxed, than traditional phone networks. This will soon change no doubt, and they're actually helping the government realize that the internet is a tax loophole. I think they'll all disappear soon and actually hurt the freedom (free as in beer) of the internet in the long run by their very existence.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Been trying out Vonage for over a week now. So far, I haven't a single complaint. Call quality has been excellent, my only complaint being that it is a bit louder than my land line. All the free included features are very nice.
The coolest thing, however is being able to retreive my voicemail from the web ... or have them delivered to my Email inbox as a .wav file!
I got fed up with the fact that I still have a charge on my Verizon phone bill for "Touch Tone Service", and that high-tech features such as "Call Waiting" still have to cost between 4 and 6 dollars!!! Not to mention the slew of taxes and fees that bloat out the monthly nut...
Hopefully this threat of real competition will revolutionize the telecom industry. ...or even better, sink the baby-bells into a pit of despair!
It's not my fault! It was this way when I got here.