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Japan: VoIP for the Masses With 050
securitas writes "Red Herring has a brief article about wide-scale VoIP deployment in Japan with the introduction of the new 050 area code. The new area code 'allows plain old telephone service (POTS) to seamlessly transition to voice-over-IP (VoIP).' Japan is now the largest country to deploy VoIP. Six companies have bought 8.5 million VoIP phone numbers, with 68% (5.78 million) of the new numbers owned by Softbank BB Phone. At $.010 for a three-minute call, the cost is three to eight times less expensive than regular wireline service."
Nobody paid for the call directly. But someone had to be paid to mine the dilithium that powered the warp core that drove the the communications array. And someone else had to be paid to build the communications array. Its called trickle down economics. Do you think that all the LD companies are suddenly finding it in the goodness of their heart to offer flat rate LD? Not bloody likely. One company did it to get a competitive edge, the rest had to do it or risk losing business. Even at flat rate, they're still making a killing at $24.95 a month...it costs them a fraction of a fraction of a cent to terminate an LD minute.
I was in an IT position in a national wireless call center environment back in the mid-90's when VoIP was just starting to ramp up. Things have improved since then I will grant you but compared to traditional telco voice service it still is way behind.
Look at all of the things that can (and do) affect Internet data. DDOS attacks, primary global DNS server exploits, BGP/RIP route poisoning, etc. Awhile back Cisco had to distribute a patch affecting practically every IOS version due to some exploit. Plenty of network engineers were patching away at the very infrastructure of the Internet.
The POTS concept might seem old and passe but it's reliability can't be argued.