Any VoIP company that is trying to be a voice replacement, is living on borrowed time (and money.) Folks over at My VoIP Provider did a historical study from August 2005 through October 2006, and found that 85 VoIP providers were kicked to the curb.
This is global data, but the issues facing these companies are pretty much the same… how to stay in business when all you can do is fight on price, and have no distinguishing features! Even AOL had to shutter its Total Talk. Vonage is no where close to being profitable, and Skype has to give away its money making services (in North America) to get some traction. And the incumbents are flexing their muscle, and taking market share by the month.
This may be too harsh, there is just too much competition right now because it’s so easy to setup a VOIP company. The weak ones will die off, and a few still survive. There will always be a need for this service.
Not all of these companies are dead. German Maxxtelekom for instance just changed their name and did not make a forward link to their new website. Now they look dead even in Google. But you can find them looking for Maxxonair.
You obviously have a little clue about VoIP. Did you know the majority of AT&T is pushing their calls through VoIP as are Cox and many other major players. You can’t look at Vonage and point a finger at an industry because one company that stands out is mismanaged. I work at a VoIP company similar to Vonage and we’ve grown about 400% in the last year. In June we were pushing 100k or so minutes, by January 07 we’ll be up to about 6million. You should get a clue about an industry instead of pointing out the flaws of one company and assuming the entire industry IS THAT ONE COMPANY
Could not agree more. The head-on attack that Vonage did will almost always fail. Innovation and meeting small market segments is the way to attack. Wins that you can defend.
However, the pricing structure is changing rapidly and we, the consumers, get more telephont for less.
Sych VoIP service providers have to find a way to add other values beyond playing the pricing game
Whatever a VoIP provider can do, the traditional telcos can improve on, in terms of price, and features. They can end up providing the VoIP themselves! In the end, whose copper are your SIP packets riding on? No need to answer that one.
All this talk about “disruptive” services is a pile of dung, when the disruption relies on a platform that could counter-disrupt at any time. Cellcos will drop their rates as soon as Skype on Symbian becomes a threat (note I say threat, not reality, there is a big gap between the latter and the former).
These companies are quite good at working out the numbers, and they will match the convenience of simply dialing a number plus a fee to the cumbersome Symbian app that takes eons to load (just try Skype on a WM5 device for comparison), get connected, and dial out.
Those who own the copper, or the airwaves, will win – it’s a matter of physics, not disruption.
VoIP as a technology is about evolution, not revolution. The VoIP industry, because it is largely populated by uncreative or unrealistic entrepreneurs, has either tried to live on arbitrage (Callback 2.0), undercut within the price delta (Vonage), or tried to pursue value propositions with no real demonstrable market traction.
You don’t market “VoIP”. You market features and capabilities using VoIP, but which might as well use strings and cups as far as the market is concerned. You use the flexibility of protocols like SIP et al to build a value proposition that is far outside the restrictions of TDM.
Of course, the delta to do this was 5 years ago, but now that Incumbents, Wireless and CableCos are all shifting to an IP core there’s no market advantage to innovating outside of these silos.
Just like in the Long Distance industry, the cost of customer acquisition is too high and the retention is not there. This is why Bernie Ebbers is doing time and why Citroen might just have to if there’s another witch hunt.
-Ian.
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