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AOL Canada To Offer VoIP
Lev13than writes "The Globe and Mail reports that AOL Canada will today announce plans to launch a VoIP service, starting with Toronto and expanding to the rest of the country by the end of March. It will be the first AOL unit to sell VoIP anywhere in the world. "TotalTalk" will sell for $30 a month after a three-month discount, including unlimited local calling, 60 minutes of North American long distance, call display, call waiting, three-way calling and call forwarding. A premium service that includes 1,000 minutes a month of North American long-distance time will sell for $45 a month after a three-month rebate.
In comparison, Bell service in Toronto costs about $50/month for similar features and a few hours of Canada-only long distance. I wonder if this will be available over AOL Dial-up?"
In comparison, Bell service in Toronto costs about $50/month for similar features and a few hours of Canada-only long distance. I wonder if this will be available over AOL Dial-up?"
Voice over IP should cost LESS not a bit less, it's not like they have to built a network or something, they get some servers gear configure it the way they want and the trick is done. 30$ a month is what I pay here in Quebec and I consider it expensive. VOIP for 30$ a month, it should cost that a year with NO long distance fee AT ALL, since no, absolutely no extra charge is placed upon the company when you make a long distance, you don't use more of their network you just connect an IP to another IP, you do not use the phone system of another country, you do not have to pay them to communicate on their land, that's the internet, it's would be like my ISP charging me more to connect to a japanese website!
This is timeless though, a technology is proposed, supposedly it will revolutionize the field for which it has been concieve because it is so unexpensive, so cheap. A company launch the service with the new technology and instead of the consummer paying less it's the company that makes more profit, VOIP, banking machines...
capitalism really sucks
Actually, AOL has been offerring VOIP through its Time Warner division for a while now. Read this press release, dated January of this year:
8 12 ,670217,00.html
http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20
They've been running commercials for it in Houston for months.
I swear, the people on Slashdot who attack market systems are almost as bad as the people who defend them! Let's cover some basic ground, shall we?
...it should cost that a year with NO long distance fee AT ALL, since no, absolutely no extra charge is placed upon the company when you make a long distance, you don't use more of their network you just connect an IP to another IP.
1) Voice over IP should cost LESS not a bit less, it's not like they have to built a network or something
How much do you know about running a VOIP business? Have you been running models that demonstrate the enormous cost difference? I bet if you did, you'd notice that ISP-level providers generally pay backbone carriers on a flat-rate PLUS a per-byte basis, not the simple flat rates like home users pay to ISPs. So if AOL customers are sending shitloads of packetized voice (potentially a LOT more bytes than they send now), AOL will have to charge accordingly to pay for it. Not to mention the fact that AOL will definitely have to purchase tons of new capacity from carriers, which increases the flat-rate portion of their costs.
2)
I'm sorry. You obviously misunderstand VOIP technology something awful. If a VOIP customer wants to talk to another VOIP customer, you are mostly correct about how you don't have to go through any phone systems or toll points. But if a VOIP customer wants to chat with a non-VOIP customer, how the FUCK is that call supposed to get into the POTS system without talking to the regular local phone company in the called area? So a VOIP provider has to maintain a VOIP gateway and a bank of outgoing phone lines in EVERY SINGLE local calling area so that its customers can reach those areaa without incurring phone toll charges once the calls leave the Internet. Now wouldn't that be kind of expensive? Especially when AOL has 30 million customers, a lot of whom probably might want to call any given area code at one time? I pity the fool ISP that gives too many busy signals to its customers.
Oh, and don't forget that VOIP gateways have to function the other way, too. How does a non-VOIP person call you, the VOIP customer? Well, your VOIP provider maintains a phone line connected to a VOIP gateway in the area code that you selected when you signed up with them, so that calls from the POTS system will be routed to that area code, and then into the VOIP gateway. Guess what? Phone lines cost money.
3) A company launch the service with the new technology and instead of the consummer paying less it's the company that makes more profit, VOIP, banking machines...
First of all, VOIP does promise to reduce the costs of consumer telephone service, but it takes time for the market to adjust to new products like this. Once VOIP gets generally accepted as a drop-in substitute for residential POTS service, the available ISPs will grow in number and customer base, and VOIP service will become just another commodity. VOIP providers will start competing with each other, and you'll see prices dropping down to the efficiency point (the price at which the business is just barely making enough profit to keep it in that market).
And for the record, banking machines HAVE reduced consumer banking costs, but in a way that you have to actually THINK about to notice. See, since consumer use of ATMs has made it possible for banks to serve a lot more customers with a lot less employees, banks have been able to either reduce costs by controlling staff (firing, or just hiring freezes) or add more paying customers to their clientele without having to pay more staff to service them. Either way, the banks have lowered their costs.
Joe Consumer sees a reduced cost, also: the banks see opportunities to undercut each others' prices (lowering or eliminating banking fees, offering higher interest rates) and gain market share, which they do. In the process, the price to the consumer drops toward the efficiency point.
It is a HELPFUL t