I am working on a competitive analysis project on Europe's top VoIP (voice over IP) countries. My focus is on consumer software products such as Skype, Yahoo!Messenger, AOL's AIM etc. I am very much interested in understanding the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finish and Russian markets. Not speaking any of the local languages, it has been a challenge...
I have not found any local products yet, but I am sure they are there!
So, what I need are some insights on the market situation. I have a general ISP and telecom view, but no latest VoIP trends. What are the local most important competitors? How do they promote themselves? Any alliances with ISPs or start-up phone companies? How do they compete with global products such as Skype, MSN, Yahoo! etc? Why would a national of any of those countries choose a local solution rather than, for example, Skype or a more international SIP-based solution?
Any information is more than welcome. Please post to the group or send to my e-mail.
But exactly how can one run a business based on pure VoIP? SIP is an essentially peer-to-peer protocol apart from the directory functionality, and either ENUM or a free registrar like FWD may provide the latter at no cost. The "VoIP provider" business only exists because most VoIP calls, today, end up terminated through the PSTN or are initiated with a PSTN call to a DID number, but as more and more people will move away from POTS devices to VoIP devices that line of business is going to die out (and anyway there are plenty of third-party "terminators" in healthy competition with each other (Voxee, VoipJet, Teliax etc.) that can pick up the leftovers). Things were different when gateways were dumb devices controlled through MGCP and the intelligence lived inside expensive units, but nowadays with less than USD 100 one can buy smart ATA's and even embedded PBX's (such as the Asterisk port to OpenWRT that runs on 80 dollar WRT54GS routers).
In summary, with intelligence moving to the edge (where it rightly belongs, in an Internet context) the carriers are left with nothing else to do but routing opaque IP packets. It's a commoditized business that everybody hates, but I can see no alternative for the poor old dinosaurs.
For many years we had a monopoly situation in Germany (see
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This changed during the 90s, and meanwhile many companies who own long distance lines offer services to end users. However the "last mile" to the end user is still owned by Deutsche Telekom in most cases so the new providers have to pay for using this line. This last mile issue can be overcome if the user has a flat rate for Internet access anyway and uses it to do the VoIP connection to someone to offer VoIP to landline (POTS) connection. Many of these VoIP providers don't support ENUM
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to map phone numbers to SIP-URIs they only support dialing shortcuts to reach partners. Some of them disabled pure VoIP connections outside their own network even if you use a SIP-URI directly. This is why I suspect that they aren't really interested in pure VoIP, but rather want to do POTS business and overcome the "last mile issue".
Some internet providers sponsor VoIP-hardware if you close a 1 or 2 years contract with them. All of them offer SIP-based solutions. The only place where Skype is promoted are Laptops, which come preconfigured with Skype and some free minutes.
It has been clear for a while that flat-fee was the way to go, also because technology has steadily reduced the actual cost of long-distance communications long before the Internet revolution: people like Andrew Odlyzko made this point for many years (see e.g.
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However, for a while the telcos carried on with the traditional model (and traditionally high charges) because they could, thanks to their monopoly status. First the Internet, and then VoIP, have exploded that fiction, forcing low and flat-fee pricing also for POTS services. In Hong Kong, where I live, a couple of telcos are presently offering flat-fee IDD to more than 20 countries for $5 - $12 a month. Europe is much less deregulated and competitive, so the charges there are still comparatively high.
But gas and oil are both scarce commodities: VoIP telephony is just a service on top of an existing resource (IP bandwidth) and its marginal cost is close to zero. (In fact, also the marginal cost of POTS telephony is about zero, but the POTS infrastructure doesn't serve any other purpose, so there is little incentive for the user to pay for it if VoIP can replace it.)
These are all services that it will be very difficult to charge for, just as it has proved nearly impossible to charge for web or e-mail services. There are just too many good free alternatives: right now, just to name a few, FWD for directory and voicemail, Ipkall and Sipgate for DID numbers, several others for both, e2 for fax-to-email conversion... Premium services will attract some charges, but the bad old days of monopolistic exploitation achieved through vertical integration are gone for good, thanks to the unbundling of transport and service layers and the global access to services allowed by the Internet model. (Which is why mobile phone providers tried, with WAP, to enforce "walled-garden" policies: with the relust of making of WAP a dismal failure).
This is not a VoIP service: it's the benefit of using IP for all the types of communication. And bringing IP bandwidth to a user will be the only really chargeable service, which is why it is our interest as users to try our best to prevent monopolies in this area. The real battle between consumers and suppliers will be in the "last mile" bringing IP connectivity to each business and residential user.
It has been clear for a while that flat-fee was the way to go, also because technology has steadily reduced the actual cost of long-distance communications long before the Internet revolution: people like Andrew Odlyzko made this point for many years (see e.g.
formatting link
However, for a while the telcos carried on with the traditional model (and traditionally high charges) because they could, thanks to their monopoly status. First the Internet, and then VoIP, have exploded that fiction, forcing low and flat-fee pricing also for POTS services. In Hong Kong, where I live, a couple of telcos are presently offering flat-fee IDD to more than 20 countries for $5 - $12 a month. Europe is much less deregulated and competitive, so the charges there are still comparatively high.
But gas and oil are both scarce commodities: VoIP telephony is just a service on top of an existing resource (IP bandwidth) and its marginal cost is close to zero. (In fact, also the marginal cost of POTS telephony is about zero, but the POTS infrastructure doesn't serve any other purpose, so there is little incentive for the user to pay for it if VoIP can replace it.)
These are all services that it will be very difficult to charge for, just as it has proved nearly impossible to charge for web or e-mail services. There are just too many good free alternatives: right now, just to name a few, FWD for directory and voicemail, Ipkall and Sipgate for DID numbers, several others for both, e2 for fax-to-email conversion... Premium services will attract some charges, but the bad old days of monopolistic exploitation achieved through vertical integration are gone for good, thanks to the unbundling of transport and service layers and the global access to services allowed by the Internet model. (Which is why mobile phone providers tried, with WAP, to enforce "walled-garden" policies: with the result of making of it a dismal failure).
This is not a VoIP service: it's the benefit of using IP for all the types of communication. And bringing IP bandwidth to a user will be the only really chargeable service, which is why it is our interest as users to try our best to prevent monopolies in this area. The real battle between consumers and suppliers will be in the "last mile" bringing IP connectivity to each business and residential user.
1995 someone predicted on a telecom conference: "In the past telephone calls were billed according to time and distance. In the future they will be billed by bandwitch, volume and latency or other quality parameters." POTS providers provide flat rates for Intra German calls and Internet providers offer Flat rates as well as volume tarifs. If you think in this categroy it does not matte if you transfer you phone call over IP or over POTS. Even the billing parameters converge between IP ant POTS.
I compare it to the difference between oil and gas heating. You can't escape the oil price by using gas. It's price will increase too. However gas is easier to use than oil.
Providers will compete with each other based on the ease of use and value added features they provide: Create your personal phone book in the Internet, click on an address and your and your partner's phone rings. Convert between fax and email. Check your voicemail from all over the world. Use a single line for phone, data, TV, and future services.
I'm Samuel Kfir-El, an IT Consultant with worldwide experience.
I'm convinced that what you need is in here:
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For further questions, please do fell FREE to contact me on: snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com
Kind Regards,
Sam
------------------------------------- Luiz Lima wrote:
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