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VoIP Price War Declared
gardel writes "Voxilla reports that a VoIP price war was declared today. An announcement that AT&T would drop its prices for its CallVantage Service from $34.99 to $29.99 per month was followed quickly by an announcement that Vonage would drop the price on its unlimited calling plan to $25 a month from the previous $29.99.
Analysts say the price cuts show the VoIP market is not only competitive, but it's serious."
Even social democrats like myself can appreciate good free-market competition like this.
If only all markets worked this way, I might be a Libertarian. . .
You're probably in the minority. My guess is that most people would prefer to have lower per minute rates than monthly rates.
I supposed the ideal would be having different packages -- the more you pay flat, the less you pay per minute..
-- DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
AT&T is a huge behemoth of a company, that isn't going anywhere. Vonage is a start-up.
For us, Vonage is a household name, but not for many outside this circle.
I have considered vonage, because of the low international rates, but I don't want to dedicate a certain portion of my bandwidth for my telephone service. My upstream is hosed enough as it is, let alone dedicating part of it to phone use.
I would love to see a drop in prices for my cable modem service however. Since i got a cable modem 4 years ago, my bill has gone up 5 bucks. Meanwhile, new subscribers get their first 6 months at 29.95. After that, if they call to cancel, they are given another 6 months at 29.95 (I know this for fact, my dad called to cancel his account, and they offered him this deal).
Meanwhile, a 4+ year subscriber like myself calls, and says they are thinking of switching to Earthlink from Roadrunner, since it is 3 bucks cheaper a month, and they give 6 months at 29.95, they do nothing to try and keep me as a customer.
Of course they don't tell you that it is essentially the same service, since Earthlink goes through the Time Warner lines. So techinically they are not losing the customer. Which begs the question, how can Earthlink charge less per month?
On top of which, Comcast and Time Warner are working on a coop bid for the remains of adelphia, which will only damage competition even further in the cable industry. *sigh*
sorry for the mostly off topic rant, but it bugs me to see services like this that can slash prices left and right in the name of competition, and the cable companies are still firm in their prices.