Jim Courtney
VoIP Phone Services -- Let's Keep It Simple
September 25, 2006 04:00 AM
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Yesterday Andy posted a reference to an article in today's San Jose Mercury News about various new "mobile lifestyle" companies that want to change the way we are using phones. But Michael Arrington has made an excellent point in stating that:
A bunch of VOIP services have launched to help people make cheaper calls from normal phones. None of them are compelling for the mass market.
The question any VC's need to ask when considering funding of any of these startups is "How do you intend to readily migrate these services into the mass market?". This is a market that fundamentally picks up a handset, "dials" a number (or looks it up in an embedded directory to dial) and makes contact with the called party. Unless it can perform this basic simple algorithm for establishing a voice connection, additional services and features become technology showcases without hope for any mass adoption (and all the associated revenue opportunities).
Over the past three months I have had the opportunity to use the VoIPVoice UConnect when in my office and their CyberSpeaker W Skype phone when on the road. (Both use the same driver software and start with a standard telephone keypad user interface.) Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to preview what is coming out this fall in cordless phones. As mentioned previously I am evaluating some relatively new wireless devices. Over the past year I have not had to pay more than 3 cents a minute for any landline long distance calls whether at home or on the road beyond any basic service fees (and since mid-May that has gone to zero for SkypeOut calls within North America).
The combined experiences have helped me establish a base line for the level of simplicity I would expect as we see the emergence of both cordless phones and wireless mobile devices that use or access Skype (and/or other VoIP-based services) while serving as a standard telephone handset:
- Can I continue to use a legacy phone setup and services (in my case my Bell Canada line) while adding Skype access and functionality?
- How easily can I make normal phone calls when "on the road"?
- How readily can I access my Skype Contacts?
- How easily can I also add the ability to either synchronize with my Outlook Contacts or use my Outlook Contacts with Skype (via, say, Skype Outlook Toolbar and/or Skylook)?
- How easily can I employ Skype's Instant Messaging functionality? Is the IM functionality integrated with SMS services?
- How readily is the billing model understood? Does the pricing give me a favorable ROI?
Michael makes an excellent point with respect to Jajah, Rebtel, Hullo and ConnectMeAnywhere when he states:
None of these services is good enough to change user behaviors in the mass market. Having to be at your computer, or call special phone numbers, is too much trouble for most people. Certainly forcing the person receiving the call to hang up and call back isn't very attractive. And traditional POTS rates continue to fall fast, meaning the incentive to go with a hard-to-use VOIP provider is lower.
Going forward this basic telephone simplicity is a required feature set as we see the introduction this fall of Skype-enabled cordless phones, Skype applications for wireless handheld devices and the evolution of Skype USB phones. (Note that I have intentionally excluded from this discussion a new category of voice-enabled home/personal entertainment devices such as those offered by Sony (Mylo) and MediaReady; they never intended to be replacements for traditional phone handsets.)
P.S. - I see that Russell Shaw also finds the ROI is not there for a dedicated Skype WiFi phone.
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The points rised here are completelly true. However there is one thing that do not apply in some countries which have very strong telecom monopolies. I live in Poland where the local telecom feels really safe and does almost nothing to lower the prices. The result is that investing around 80 euro in the ATA box gives profit already after 5 months of use! I'm actually fond of ATA-type of solutions where one can still use his ordinary handset, like DECT in my case, still normally dial numbers and receive calls and, the best of all, enjoy much lower prices.
The prices for voip services are falling faster then the telecom prices becouse there are many competitors here and the change of the operator takes only 5 minutes, wheras with the telecom it takes at least one month (this might be typically polish invention thou :-))
To summarise: the more stubborn the telecom is, the better the penetration of voip services. Just look at the size of polish skype community!
Greetings,
Christopher
"This is a market that fundamentally picks up a handset, "dials" a number (or looks it up in an embedded directory to dial) and makes contact with the called party. Unless it can perform this basic simple algorithm for establishing a voice connection,"
I think if you looked at our service you would find that this is exactly what we do. Although we have been lumped in with some of the more complex callback solutions, our user experience after registration and set up is very simple and very straight forward. The whole process is about to get even more so.
Once you set up your local number, all you do to call that contact is just dial the number. It's that easy. Any phone can use it, no downloads, no software.
Please feel free to give the service a test, we would welcome any feedback. We are a small company with a very loyal and fast growing user base our product which is pretty cool already (if I do say so myself) is about to get a lot cooler. And one thing we always do, is listen to our customers.
Kindest Regards,
Ryan Gallagher.
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