The Need For Softphones

Andy at VoIP Watch has been traveling a fair bit lately and as expected, been doing a lot of calling over VOIP. As he’s moved along, all the calling has been over softphone since they make it easier to route around hotel port blocking as well as basic configuration issues.

I totally agree with his perspective that the US carriers need to focus in on this as a real product and as I’ve noted before, NOT charge extra for it. Vonage charges extra for the privledge while AT&T does not even offer it.

Time Warner Cable VOIP offering in NYC

The VoIP Weblog notes the launch of Time Warner Cable’s VOIP service in NYC. The pricing is out of whack for VOIP, but certainly less than you are probably paying Verizon for unlimited calling. Seems they’ve chosen to target pricing against Cablevision which makes no sense, since you can’t pick what cable company you buy service from anyway.

Andy does not think this is even VOIP

I’m not so sure it matters to the consumer. They’ll perceive it as such since phone service is coming from a different place than normal. In Marketing, perception can become reality.

VOIP Price Watch

AT&T Callvantage dropped their price today by $5 (to 30) which was quickly countered by Vonage bringing their price to $25/mo. This is an unlimited local and LD package with enhanced features – a great deal at either price.

Vonage has too be pissed though… They are the small guy here and it’s clear the deep pockets at AT&T could push them down until they no longer make any money on current customers…assuming of course this has been profitable to begin with. As the review goes on for the marketing of their business, we may learn a bit more about their current customer acquisition costs, which I figure are higher than desired given the (perceived) wasted reach they run to try and keep pace ATT. To me that’s a losing battle and they should instead focus on reaching the right kinds of people with the right less techie message. AT&T is doing a great job educating people through mass media and now Verizon Voicewing is getting in the game as well. Vonage needs to be smarter.

Om covers this bit as does Andy and thevoipweblog. By all counts this hurts. The SIPphone lawsuit against their current in-store marketing can’t feel too good either. Michael Disruption Robertson stirring it up again…

Skype Cold Calls?

I’ve received a few calls from strangers in the past few days and it’s quite odd. Usually I start Skype with an IM before calling even with the people I regularly chat with. I mean who knows if you are there let alone all connected with your headset. I don’t recognize any of the names that have called me and they all seem to be overseas – actually I can only get info on 2 of the 3 and one was from Germany and the other was from China. I am pretty sure I don’t know anyone living in either place and don’t have any friends traveling under an alias in either place…

Anyone else getting these? I’ve I had voicemail I’d be able to see if this is really a telemarketer / voice spammer. For now I’ve got the call log…

Circuit City picks up AT&T CallVantage

I’ll have to stop by and see how this gets positioned with Vonage on the shelf. When I picked up my Vonage box at Circuit City, it was totally self-service with no marketing. Now that there’s a choice, one would think there’s going to be some end capping or shelf-talking going on…

Beginning Friday, consumer electronics retailer Circuit City will sell AT&T CallVantage Net phone services in many of its outlets and through its Web site, the two companies said on Wednesday. [News.com]

AT&T forms Net phone alliance

AT&T secures it’s place in VOIP… not that I was concerned or anything. This puts them in the driver’s seat for taking things to the next level – mainly enabling mass adoption.

Consumer electronics, chip and software makers will use specifications developed by AT&T to create telephone adapters, Wi-Fi phones, game consoles, set-top boxes and telephone networking equipment, the carrier announced Tuesday. The products developed in the VoIP Innovation and Interoperability Program will work with AT&T’s Internet calling services, the company said. [CNET News.com]

Cable VoIP

Andy cites a Kinetic Research report on Cable VOIP and notes:

What’s interesting is they also report that the home grown VoIP from Charter and Comcast is over a year away. Seems amongst the giants that only Cablevision saw the future of VoIP and moved quickly to roll out their own service. [VoIP Watch]

Cablevision has actually been running quite a few ads lately in the NY market (though interesting on Time Warner – heh). I’ve noticed they are really pushing the triple-play and have focused on same bill rates for each service – $29.95/mo.

Ford going VOIP

The WSJ has a good piece on how SBC just sold a huge “internet telephony” contract to Ford to go live within the next 3 years. Not sure why they did not reference VOIP at all, but surely seems to be the topic.

SBC Communications Inc. is rolling out Internet phone service to 50,000 Ford Motor Co. employees in 110 locations, marking one of the largest such deployments yet as traditional phone companies enter the Internet-calling fray. [WSJlink should work for a few days]

One of the clear benefits to large organizations is managing a single network for voice, video and data… sounds good to me. I like it from one place as well and I’m just one guy.

No Skype for Palm…

Skype has now corrected the earlier reports that a Palm OS version was coming next month… It’s not looking too good for anytime soon either.

Last week, several Skype developers posted comments in their company’s forums saying that the ABC News report was in error.

At this point, Skype Technologies doesn’t seem to be developing a Palm OS version of their application at all. [Brighthand]

VOIP the Movie

No one can escape it, we’re all slaves to it.

Covad has created a fake movie site that looks kind of like what you might expect from CSI The Movie. It’s definitely high quality and well executed (but slow loading) in my opinion. I’d love to see the rest of this campaign to see how it was promoted beyond movie trailers…

The target must be CIO / CTO at Fortune level organizations since the product they show is a dashboard for your company’s telephony. I’d imagine there’s a pretty intense lead generation campaign going to work off the budget it must have cost to produce the site. I would imagine the close time on a lead in this space is many months so there’s probably quite a few moving parts. I don’t know that I would have been duped into checking this out, but am glad I did.

I have become quite interested in VOIP tech as of late (had you not been paying attention) and think things are only going to get hotter in the category. Unlike Andy, I don’t have any clients in the arena just yet…

Xten eyebeam released

SIPthat notes that Xten has launched a new video over IP SIP softphone… eyebeam. This is the same, though now enhanced application Vonage uses for softphone. The trick to this like all video phone / conferencing applications is getting someone on the other side. You can buy this for PC today at $60… OS X is coming soon.

I wonder whether the X-PRO software currently available is worth the $50 price. Is there quality that you don’t get in the Free or bundled service? Anyone? I actually find some limitations with the current app – like the address book sucks. I’m pretty content with Skype at the moment, though to be able to receive calls (yes I know I am saying it again) would be even better.

Vonage Account in Review

Courtesy of Mediapost

There are five agencies still competing for Vonage’s estimated $50 million account. They are: Arnold Worldwide; Carat; Mullen; Lowe, teamed up with Avenue A/Razorfish; and Starcom MediaVest and SMG Direct.

If I had to pick, I’d probably lean towards Mullen since they’ve got previous experience with Nextel which is also a complex, yet easy to use telecom service. Should be interesting to watch from the sideline…

Skype for Mac OS X 0.9.0.1

Skype released a revised Mac OS X client today…

From the Skype Release Notes:

  • feature: you can set your birthday in your profile
  • change: enabled red close button in main window
  • change: Skype recognizes SkypeOut numbers in different formats a la (+44-55-66-77)
  • bugfix: auto-login should be much more stable now
  • bugfix: “Text” was displayed on My Skype tab, when user logged in
  • bugfix: proper handling of simultaneous calls (you are calling to the person who calls you)
  • bugfix: drawer refreshed properly in case of multiple calls
  • bugfix: contact view icon updated after blocking an user
  • bugfix: after changing your password, it will be updated in keychain as well

    Skype for Palm OS — Coming Soon!

    Skype Rocks — This is still a pseudo rumor, but we’ll know soon enough. Skype is VERY quickly pushing itself across most if not all connected platforms. You gotta love it. No word just yet on what type of connection will be required to do voice, but at the very minimum, it seems you’ll be able to have a single IM client across all platforms which is certainly handy. I hope GPRS is able to handle it, though it will most likely require WiFi at a minimum.

    According to the ABC news website tonight Skype will introduce a Palm client next month – “A name on many lips was Skype Technologies S.A., the rave of the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) revolution. Luxembourg-based Skype displayed its software for Pocket PC-based handheld computers that lets anyone in a Wi-Fi cloud make a free Internet voice call to other Skype users. Company founder Niklas Zennstrom called from Europe and the audio quality was at least as clear as any landline phone service. A Palm OS version is promised for next month.” [Palm Addict]

    VoIP Watch Runs The Players

    Andy at VOIP Watch runs through a call test using quite a few players through soft and hard phone… Callvantage gets the confirmed flag with the best call clarity, followed by Vonage Voice Pulse and SkypeOut. I thought it was pretty interesting from his conversation, that Skype to Skype had a better sound quality to it than a SkypeOut call which used at least one landline, though he did not mention on which of the many VOIP services he received the call. I have a feeling it was Callvantage, and would bet there was no standard / traditional phone involved.

    Fortune on Vonage

    Fortune has a nice piece on Vonage and CEO and founder Jeffery Citron. While Citron has a somewhat spotted past (a slight SEC issue) you can’t question the man’s prior success with Island and Datek which lend some good credibility to his ability to lead a company. The trick though is that the game of telecom has ruthlessly locked out newcomers though Citron is pushing to bust through and might just do that if he can move fast enough.

    As has been widely discussed, Vonage chose the fast track to get service to market instead of taking a somewhat more conservative track lining up service level agreements with providers like Level 3. Vonage instead choose Global Crossing which works, though has issues at times (have you heard the flicker?) where apparently competitors like A&TT and Packet 8 amongst others do not.

    Now in some seriously competitive waters, I hope that in addition to the marketing budget they consider some service upgrades as well so that does not become an issue of comparison by which others like ATT might judge. Phone wars are notoriously nasty and it’s only a matter of time until Vonage gets put down for a lesser service and no matter how many wifi capable phones they offer, people are going to want reliability when they opt to leave the old way behind. It’s not going to hurt to take a serious look at how they are spending to acquire customers as well.

    Vonage arrives

    Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter, finally checked Vonage out and has officially caught the bug like the rest of us using VOIP….

    The features are amazing. I get caller ID, Call Waiting and Simultaneous Ring (so my cell phone rings along with the Vonage phone and I can direct calls to either voice mail). Best of all, I can control everything from a slick web interface. I know these features have been around for years, but my local telco would charge me more for those services alone than I would pay Vonage for everything. I’ll be running in test mode for a few weeks but if the service quality stays constant, I’m going to sign up. The best compliment I can give Vonage is that it just worked. Simply and effectively, like my plain old telephone service, only without the higher costs. [Michael Gartenberg]

    He notes the same issues I’ve picked up on, though he’s having difficulty with audio echo, based on (my guess) that he’s using the mic and speaker on his computer without headphones or a headset. This definitely causes a looping sound since things are so close together… get a headset or headphones, Michael – I think you’ll appreciate a serious difference.

    I’m not sure how many more people will say that Vonage has to offer the softphone as part of the deal, but it’s clear that many people love the idea of a completely portable number. With the additional clients, you can have a phone on ANY capable device – the trick is getting it to be the same number which is more of a limit Vonage sets for now than anything else. You could have the same number across computers, PDAs etc… Skype gives you this today, but without incoming it’s limiting it’s potential. In time I hope…

    Gripes on Skype

    Om points to an piece at The Unofficial Apple Weblog which gripes about Skype. I don’t really agree with much Greg Scher had to say so here’s what I started to post as a comment until I realized I was writing more than enough for a real post…

    Greg –

    I think you are a tad harsh on Skype for a few reasons… First, they’ve designed it purely as a softphone. Vonage makes you pay extra for the privledge of a softphone and it’s not even an extension of the same number, to add a new line. There may be hardward options beyond headsets later, but most likely will not be part of the free computer based service.

    • Call quality is excellent. It all does depend on the quality of your connection, but over the exact same connection, I’ve had better success with Skype than Vonage at times.
    • It’s free baby. If you don’t like it don’t use it. I’ve been promoting it to friends since the more people who use it enable more free calls…Skype to Skype will apparently always be free.
    • You also say that Wifi is not available enough? Wifi is hardly a requirement though it certainly makes things simpler. I don’t think anyone is looking to necessarily replace their mobile though you can get extremely competitive rates when you might get nailed with roaming charges, particularly internationally. You don’t need Wifi either… it works just the same or even better when you are connected through a cable.

    I think some of the other things you mention are legit…

    • You should be able to send your contacts between machines without having to re-authorize people, but at least we all get it for now. You can be connected and live on multiple machines which makes it easy enough to pass along the info.
    • 911 is not really a priority for me since I am far from ready to use Skype as my primary line for anything…

    When premium services come it should be very interesting to watch. Voicemail, Video Phone and most likely SkypeIn are all enroute. It’s going to get better not worse.