Promotions
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Today, SIPphone announced that Gizmo Project users will be able to call other Gizmo users for free in 60 countries. The free calling is not just Gizmo to Gizmo, but Gizmo to other Gizmo users from Gizmo to their mobile phones and landlines. We now have to ask ourselves, is this yet another milestone on [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on July 19th, 2006 with no comments.
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This morning, Internet telephony provider SunRocket introduced a flat-fee, $299-a-year calling plan to 41 localities around the world.SunRocket SunSpots Edition will include much of Europe, China, Japan, South Korea and Argentina, as well as key cities in Latin America such as Mexico City, São Paulo, and Caracas. SunSpots also offers unlimited free calling throughout the [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on July 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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On his IT Facts blog, colleague Alex Moskalyuk posts a link to a Harris Interactive report entitled, "Awareness of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) on the Rise in Great Britain and in the United States.The report, which has been summarized before, asks 1,089 U.S. and 1,117 U.K. consumers 18 or over about VoIP.Noticed I said [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on April 16th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Skype and General and Providers and trends and Google and yahoo and Verizon VoiceWing and Promotions.
Earlier this week, Comcast announced that beginning this spring, they would offer their broadband, digital video and Comcast Digital Voice VoIP package via "Connection Centers" in some 500 Wal-Marts.My first reaction was a hearty "huh?" I thought this after flashing briefly on the demographics of Wal-Mart shoppers and VoIP users.From my unempirical and admittedly stereotypicalobservation, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on April 12th, 2006 with no comments.
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At the CTIA show last week, digital advertising agency isobar's CEO Sarah Fay described a mobile marketing campaign her agency did for the tv series "Veronica Mars." (That's actor Kristen Bell, who plays teen sleuth Veronica).Here's how it worked. Viewers sent SMS' to a specific address, and then those viewers received SMS' back from "Veronica." [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on April 9th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Skype and General and trends and Softphones and Google and yahoo and Promotions and CTIA.
Yesterday at Spring VON 2006, CompUSA announced its partnership with Bandwidth.com and Sylantro Systems to offer what it called the first full-featured hosted VoIP service for small and medium-sized businesses in the retail industry. Target audiences will be businesses in need of 10 to 200 lines. I have one word for this strategy. Two words, [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on March 16th, 2006 with no comments.
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Early Thursday morning I received a press release from Skype's p.r. agency in which Skype mentioned its new Skype for Business solution.On the face of it, Skype for Business sounds like a neat idea. Skype believes that some 30 percent of their regular users are businesses, and this Skype for Business is aimed at those [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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Colleague John Borland writes today about Wolfgang's Vault, a website with thousands of rare live performance cuts from the 1960s and 1970s, man.We're talking streaming media, and we're talking free to the people, man.Jimi Hendrix, Janis, and so much more man.Right now I am listening to a live cut from the Fillmore Auditorium of the [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on February 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Tom Keating’s post today, Vonage opens SIP credentials? quoted a anonymous source stating that Vonage will be opening up their SIP credentials.
A source informed VoIP & Gadgets Blog that Vonage plans to open up their SIP credentials to enable users to configure their own SIP softphones and SIP hardphones to work with the Vonage service at no additional charge. Today Vonage still has kept the SIP credentials “closed” preventing users from using their own SIP devices with the Vonage service. One of the main reasons why Vonage has kept the SIP credentials “closed” is that they charge $9.99/month for their SIP softphone client, which then gives you access to your “personal SIP credentials”. It comes with 500 minutes along with a different SIP URI and PSTN number than your main Vonage phone number. The obvious question is why would Vonage do an about face, open up the SIP credentials and start giving away SIP credentials access for “free” when they curerntly charge for them?
I don’t see Vonage opening up their SIP credentials for their residential offering.
What I do see is Vonage opening up their SIP credentials for the re-introduction of their business class offering. No, not their “fake”, $49.99 offering, but their robust, multi-line offering that they did away with just prior to the FCC E911 rulings. It is common knowledge that Vonage had conducted interoperability testing with numerous SMB IP PBX companies. It is also known that a primary reason for their discountinuing of the service was due to E911 problems. It makes sense for them, now that they have a E911 solution in place, to re-offer the business solution with open credentials for use with a variety of IP PBX’s like Asterisk.
People are looking to leverage the IP phones they already have with their VoIP service provider. Why wouldn’t Vonage want to leverage the millions of Cisco IP phones and other SIP-based hardware phones out there? Additionally, Asterisk is a very popular open-source IP-based phone system that many Asterisk users have configured with SIP trunks for outbound termination. Vonage is shooting themselves in the foot by forcing the Asterisk community to use Vonage’s competitors for PSTN termination.
A move towards a bring your own device offering for Vonage, would sound a fundamental shift in the way they presently do business. A move that, for their residential offering, allows no “financial” protection for them because a user can leave without loosing much. Their current closed credentials acts as financial protection and aides in customer retention because most customers will not drop the service until they receive their rebate (3-4 months). This ensures that Vonage will at least break even on the transaction (ARPU $24.95×3 = $74.85, device is $59.95).
The source summed up his thoughts when he stated, “If Vonage wants to continue to build their customer numbers and retain the ones they have, then they need to continue to innovate. Offering SIP credentials to users is a perfect way to ensure the loyalty of ‘techies’ and ‘teenagers’ that also often recommend a VoIP service provider to their parents and friends.”
Techies and teenagers made up the first round of Vonage activations. Vonage is now focused on the next round of consumers, the dsl and cable internet subscribers who are not techies, but that want to use their “personal bandwith” to its highest potential and save money.
If Vonage is to offer an open credentials plan, it is my best guess that it would be in the form of the re-birth of their previous business class offering or as a bolt-on of their current offerings requiring a annual contract with an early termination fee and or an activation fee. Tom’s sources are great and they usually are right, but this time, in the fashion that his source described the offering, I do not buy it.
Garrett Smith
Written by Garrett Smith on February 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Vonage and VoIP (the New Phone) and VoIP and News and General and Softphones and Business VoIP and Residential VoIP and Promotions and VOIP 2.0.
Within the next few months, you will be able to buy Skype ringtones from artists such as Madonna and Green Day.These ringtones will cost $1.50 a pop.First of all, I think this deal is plain dumb. A short, non-obtrustive ringtone on my cell would work. Helps differentiate my phone from others when I am in [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 31st, 2006 with no comments.
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I have been writing that MySpace would be an ideal acquirer for Net2Phone's underpriced, iconic softphone's assets.Now it appears that the hugely popular social networking site- owned by News Corp.- has had other ideas.MySpace has partnered with theglobe.com to release tglophone for MySpace users.Any Myspace user who downloads the tglo software receives a softphone allowing voice [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 26th, 2006 with no comments.
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