© Dave Raboin
Nicole Schuman raises an interesting question about the state of the VoIP industry based on the numbers. If you look at the quarter-over-quarter numbers, it appears the market is slowing down. If you look at the overall Market penetration, it's going up.
So which is it? I think one things for sure: the incumbent telcos are losing landline customers. Cable companies are seeing an increase in the number of subscribers to their telephony services. What's not clear to me is how mobile phones are factoring into the decision to cut the cord.
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i used to believe that in the USA flat rate unlimited mobile voice would be the thing to kill the landline. i am not so sure about that anymore. these days so many people seem to have landlines that they never use but refuse to give up. cost savings is no longer the reason for holding onto it. safety, reliability(including workably during power outages) and far and away the best voice quality out there. you also happen to get far better customer service than from most VOIP or mobile operators. the exception being a few very small operations that will not be able to sustain there customer support if they grow.
what is really badly need in the ‘phoneline replace’ category are companies that stay focused on the the following three things: pricing(should be rock bottom), customer support(need to go way beyond just sales pitches), and call quality(how about some exotic proprietary codecs?) on the last point don’t get me wrong. i am a huge fan of open standards; but we are talking about companies(i am thinking vonage, comcast, at&t callvantage, etc.) that are not about to open up there networks. in that case i could care less if they use sip or any other standard. instead they should stat competing on call quality by inventing new protocols.
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