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2.7 Million VOIP Subscribers in the United States
prostoalex writes "There are 2.7 million paying VOIP customers in the United States, according to research by TeleGeography. The whole industry will generate $220 million this year, with Vonage leading as far as customer number."
...is how many "unpaying" VoIP there are in the US. I, for one, use services that are free, like Skype, to communicate with friends. Skype does have a payment service, but along with my friends I never need it. We kinda fly under the radar.
I can't imagine that there are just a few of us that use systems like iChat, Skype etc. for voice communication.
Is this still a shortcoming of VOIP? If so, that's a lot of people without a lifeline.
I talk to the big telcos on a regular basis as part of my job and I've been jabbing them for a while about the impending death of their voice business, but their stories have been changing, well not Bell South, but the others are really pushing hard into home and business VOIP, especially ATT.
POTS doesn't need a death watch yet, but it's certainly moving that way.
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
So, now that people are starting to take up VoIP, do you think that people will start to look for the best quality or continue to go for the cheapest price.
At our company (don't worry we only deal with companies, so this isn't an ad), we have a new routing system that does Least Cost Routing, but with weighting. This allows us to weight providers higher or lower based on their performance/quality.
While this increases our prices slightly, it does mean that we have pretty good QOS.
Do you think that as the market progresses this will be something that consumers get or will it always be the domain of large enterprises?
-={ Security does not exist - give up }=-
..that you "don't matter", since you're "leeching" and not "generating millions for the industry".. :|
I was one of the early (...early) adopters of voice over IP (...pee) and I think {static} is great (...great).
My hat's off to Vonage (...ojj)
I'm a big tall mofo.
We have OOL here in Brooklyn. The service is great and we haven't had a probl
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
... of the ol' hard wired POTS phone in my kitchen. I hardly ever use it, but it was the only one I had during the blackout here in the northeast a couple years ago. The cell system had power, but getting a line was iffy.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
For example, the biggest VOIP company in Japan, Softbank has about 4.4 million VoIP customers. Yes, that's just one of the VOIP companies in Japan. (Source: cabledatacomnews.com)
I'm not here to brag about Japan. I'm sure S. Korea and China have impressive, if not larger numbers of VOIP users.
is still the most reliable for me. When the power goes out (often), I still have my phone working and can even use dial-up to send a quick email. The technology is very simple and super reliable, so it won't go away anytime soon.
$220 million / 2.7 million users = $81.48 / year
$81.48 per year / 12 month = $6.79 / month
The average VOIP account only is only $6.79 per month? That doesn't seem right. I have one of the cheaper accounts available ($14.99, VoicePulse), so I am a little skeptical of that number.
From the linked article, Vonage has 750,000 customers. Assuming they are all on the cheapest plan:
750,000 x $14.99 x 12 = 134,910,000
Which would mean for all non-Vonage VOIP customers:
$85 million / 2 million customers / 12 months = $3.54 per month per customer
Given the other players involved (VoicePulse, Voicewing, AT&T, Time Warner), I have a hard time believing that number.
- Tony
Next problem is I moved, and I found a better deal through my phone company. You may want to check and see what deals your current phone provider has before you jump on the VoIP wagon.
VoIP is an excellent solution for people who are on the phone long distance for more than just your usual call to your relatives to check up.
I looked at my useage and already had a cell phone. I must say, in the grand scheme of things that VoIP was not a solution for me any longer.
Canceling Vonage takes close to an act of congress. You have to call their cancellation center (forget that it's only open 7.5 hours a day monday - friday) then you have to sit on hold (forget the fact that it's like any other call center that you wait a fair amount of time on hold) and then you are given a Return number. Also you are given a $40 charge to your credit card. You have to scrounge up the power supply, ata box, phone cord, ethernet cord, and manual. If you're like me and you know that you'd eventually have to return this stuff, you kept all that in a box in the closet. If you don't return everything, you don't get the refund.
I was very impressed with Vonage until the very end in which they would not let me cancel my service until I heard a song and dance and agreed that I didn't want their service any more.
If you have a cell phone with long distance and rarely ever need to make a lengthy long distance phone call, VoIP ain't it.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
In France, there's almost 2 millions VoIP subscribers, which means VoIP is three and a half more popular here.
:-)
This is mostly due to Free, a kick-ass ISP which bundles maximum-speed DSL access (4.6 Mbps in my case, 10,000 feet from the DSLAM), free VoIP communications (to all landlines in France, and cheap rates for everyhting else, except cellular phones), 100 free TV stations (plus 100 others for various fees), an unlimited number of 1 GB web spaces with unlimited bandwidth, no ads, and MySQL+PHP5 support, an unlimited number of mailboxes, and plenty of things I forget right now, all that for the great price of 30 euros per month.
Their customer service sucks, though, and you better not have problems, because they'll take a long while to be solved.
Overall, I'm happy.
I wonder how the VoIP and DSL services are in countries other than France and the U.S.
Has anyone seen a good rundown on the pros and cons of a lot of VOIP services? I'm looking to get a second line at the house for work, but don't want to pay for it. I don't mind paying $5-7 for an incoming virtual phone#, I just don't want to pay $35-45 for a regulated line.
Skype is cool but not sure if it has the features I would need. I like Voicepulse's features but they are still in the $20+ range. I'm gonna be low usage on the call-out (to PSTN), so I want to stick with something where I pay as I go for minutes.
Right now I'm looking at SIPphone and Gizmo.
makes my squeaky geeky voice sounds manly when I ask Betty Lou out on a date?
I just signed up, and while they advertise the ability to transfer (port) landline and cellphone numbers to their service, they happened to put me on an exchange (owned by McLeod) that can only accept landline number transfers. It's a bit annoying because I just made a $50 cellphone payment that could have been avoided if they had all of their stuff in order. My number even passed the number "test" on their web page, but took them two weeks to tell me that the transfer was impossible (due to their exchange's limitations).
It's something to be aware of when folks sign up for Vonage service. The LNP transfer is ofter a tedious process, and not all of their providers have the same capabilities. They do *not* tell you this until after you already sign up.
Otherwise, the service seems to be quite reliable and sounds great. It has boatloads of excellent features and should provide a nice bridge between IP and POTS communication.
Due to odd circumstances, I've had 3 vonage accounts in the last year, 2 of which I've had to cancel. It's never taken me more than 15 minutes to cancel, and there's no song and dance or credit card charges.
The differences may be that I'd bought my own equipment from bestbuy and sam's club already, so there was no issue of returning anything. They just shut off my number - nothing more to it. They did ask why I was cancelling, I told them, and that was it.
I do agree that in some cases, it's not worth it for some people - paying for the 500 minutes whether you use it or not. But, let me put some of my numbers to you.
I have a cable modem - roughly $40/month. I'm using that no matter what for internet access. Adding an extra $15/month in vonage on top of that means phone/internet is $55/month. Yes, I'm paying for '500 minutes even if I don't use them' (a vonage 'rollover minutes' plan like cingular would be great).
However, compare that to my local verizon POTS. It's close to $50/month *before any other charges*. Start adding on all the per minute fees for calls, then extra taxes on top of that, and it's crazy.
Our phone usage pattern is probably different from most - we've got family both in UK and Australia. Verizon's *best* deal was 10 cents/minute to Australia - Vonage is 4 cents, which includes taxes (verizon adds on taxes later). And to get that wonderful 10 cents per minute rate I have to sign up for 'international caller' plan at an extra $4.99/month.
Yes, the quality of the Vonage line isn't as solid as the POTS. Occasionally there is static or a really bad connection. I'd say that's less than 1 in 10 calls. But for a 60+% savings, it's definitely worth it in our case.
creation science book
"Operator, I'm trying to call my elderly mother, but there seems to be a fault..."
"Sir, you'll have to have your mother run traceroute and then call us back."
"How do I call my mother to tell her and how does she run traceroute?"
"Perhaps you can download the instructions from our website and mail them to her?"
"Time Warner [is the] second-largest, trailing only Vonage [which has about] 750,000 [3x 2004Q2]"
Who's got the actual market share numbers, either from TeleGeography, or otherwise?
--
make install -not war
I hear (...eeaar) you loud ( .ooud) and quite staticky (...icky...icky)
I'm in the same boat waiting for an LNP back to my baby bell
...Voice-over-IP subscribes to *YOU*! Seriously, I think VoIP is just another step towards convergence -- where all anyone will need for communications is a TCP/IP feed in your choice of broadband flavors, for everything from telephone service to surfing to music and TV entertainment. All on-demand and customizable. (The only hitch is making sure some semblance of privacy remains.)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
If their commercials weren't so fucking annoying.
I've had vonage for a while, and most of the time it sounds way better than my landline (which I still have with minimum service, since cells don't work near my house).
The only time it's been choppy is when I used 4 way calling (I call family member who has 3-way, and then we each add another person) and two people try to talk at once. It's not as bad on 3-way, but I think that's because there are fewer times when both other people are trying to talk at once.
DSL sucks up here in Canada. (Trust me I work for a DSL provider and I stick with my cable internet) There is a ridiculous amount of downtime for DSL internet because the technology is flaky to begin with. E.G. - big lightning storm yesterday knocked out my girlfriends DSL. Phone lines still worked though. Do you really want your most important means of communication to rely on something as unstable as the internet? Suppose lightning hit my girlfriends place yesterday and set it on fire. If she was using voip instead of her phone line she would have no way to call for help. I get VOIP subscribers calling me constantly at work to troubleshoot their slow speed problems but their sync rate is so low that their phone keeps cutting in and out. It's frustrating. Why would anybody want VOIP? I prefer to keep thing simple. Use the right tool for the right job. Phone lines are for making phone calls, the internet is for surfing porn.
I've been Beta testing Bell.ca's Internet Voice for about a year now,
It works great, there were a few slight hiccups at rst (mostly dealing with my non standard [not a store-bought router firewall situation) but that's all long since been resolved. I've taken it all over the place and it works great on any high speed connection. As more people discover computers and what they can do with them, more people will adopt this type of tech, anyone who can grasp the concept of configuring their home networking router (eg. pointing a browser at 192.168.0.1 etc..) will have no problem setting up a voIP adapter. I think a lot of tech still has to be simplified for the masses, but the quality is ready for prime time, I haven't paid a long distance bill in a year.. yippee!
/nev/dull/c
Cthulhu Saves -- in case He's hungry later.
I see a few posts bragging about these numbers. Stop now before you embarass yourself.
For example, the biggest VOIP company in Japan, Softbank has about 4.4 million VoIP customers.
Your number are not worth braggng about. Often contries with less infrastructure will leap frog countries with far more.
For example the fastest growing cell phone, sat phone, satellite dish market in the world is Iraq. They were not allowed these devices under Saddam and now that they can have them, they now have more cell phones than land lines. Should we all envy thier position right now?
The US has a massive investment in copper -- and has for a century. It is silly to think that we will abondon a WORKING technology to be on the bleeding edge when we don't need to. I have 3 (count them 3) broadband lines into my home... I also have a PSTN phone. Why? Because it works. I don't need one more thing in my life that needs firmware upgrades (et al) to work, I need a damn phone.
I've never understood why people brag about adoption rates of technology. Humans tend to migrate to new technology when it offers a signifigant performance gain over existing technology. (see also Iraq)
If XXXXX country has more cell phones than YYY country it is probably becasue the solution they had previously sucked, so the upgraded was of more worth to the population.
So to coin a phrase: Stop now before you embarass yourself.
if you give it the access it needs to become a supernode it can really rape your connection maxing out 100mbit is not unheared of!
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It is free after the first euro. then its unlimited free international calling, i love it. :)
http://www.voipbuster.com/
Well it's not really off topic. I'd rather a review from an unknown slashdotter than 10 marketing web pages.
PSTN connect?
TeleGeography's own survey concluded that 30% of U.S. broadband subscribers have never heard of VoIP and that only 30% of online households would consider replacing a landline if "automatic" 911 was not part of the service. (June 15th)
2.7 Million minus one. As of this afternoon I am cancelling my Vonage account. Why? I waited a year for them to pick up my local area code and exchange, which they said was coming when I signed up. It didn't come fast enough. Sorry, Vonage.
IF I decided to put VoIP back in service in my home (as opposed to just using our cells), it will be with Packet8. Packet8 not only has my area code and exchange, they also have E911 service for my area (and most other areas) AND they're cheaper.
See here: Fuck Vonage
Lots of great comments there too.
Arbitrary sig
Vonage is running a promotion in preparation for welcoming their 1 millionth line / customer / whatever. It looks like you can play only once a day, but it might be something to put on your list of things to do when you get in or out of work...
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
Heh.
But if you are seriously concerned about your line, try http://testyourvoip.com/. It is a free service and allows you to keep a history of performance so you can try a few times and see if the service degrades at any particular time.
-ben
At VoipBuster, you can call any regular land based telephone in any of the countries listed in the right hand panel for FREE. However, to counter misuse of the network and reserve capacity we have limited these free calls to a maximum of 1 minute per call. In order to get UNLIMITED FREE CALLS upgrade your VoipBuster application, simply by buying 1,- worth of credit.
I had vonage for about 3 months. their service is great (no static, no downtime) but their customer service is horrible.
I had to move and called them. they would repeatedly hang up on me. finally frustrated, I tried to cancel my service. it is simply impossible to cancel their service. they will just hang up on you. their customer service is terrible.