I see Om Malik has picked up on a theme I raised last week – that access independent VoIP may just not be there in terms of acting as a replacement for the general public. Sure, it’s cheaper and gives virtual numbers, but, as Om summarized, users lose reliability, sound quality and emergency access.
I’ll note that these complaints do not apply to the digital voice products coming from the cable companies or the phone companies, such as Bell’s Digital Voice. But those services are access dependent – you buy the voice application from the same carrier as your access wiring – and lose the nomadic capability. That is how the carrier controls the quality, manages the reliability and gives accurate 911 address information. What these products lack is just some of the ‘cool’ factor and so far, there is no great price advantage.
At least in Canada, we seem to prefer an orderly market, allowing the cable companies to enter the voice business with healthy margins, but sacrificing some of the vigourous price competition that consumers might otherwise enjoy.
A year after the CRTC set in place its rules for VoIP, we’ll be looking at all aspects of the competitive marketplace – both access independent and dependent voice products – at The 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit on June 12-14.