VoIP has to deliver more to avoid being PoIP – POTS over IP. VoIP providers can’t compete if their only advantage is deep discount pricing – ‘In a starvation contest, the fat guy always wins.‘
So, the incumbent players will win a price war. What are some of the more innovative applications for consumers and businesses?
Jon Arnold and Jeff Pulver have recently written about Rebtel, a company that is productizing an application that I have been doing on my own with VoIP lines set up for call forwarding.
Here is part of the idea:
- In the US, consumers are now buying ‘big buckets’ of nation-wide calling minutes. I have a New York phone number that is set up to forward to my home line, which enables our US friends and family to call us (in Canada) using their virtually unlimited bucket of minutes.
- I have set up a Toronto line to forward to each of my kids phones at school and set up a line in their university town to forward back to us in the Toronto area.
With Rebtel, you can take this concept to a global level. There were other companies playing with similar ideas, so watch your investments!
Will such arbitrage be effective enough to get cellular companies to be more realistic with their outrageous long distance rates?