家用無繩電話即將跨入互聯網時代
現有的家用DECT無繩電話可通過加撥17909或其它特殊號碼打IP長途電話，但其實它算不上真正的IP電話，因為它不能打本地IP電話，它只是將傳統長途電話線路改走互聯網罷了，本地線路仍然走的是傳統電話切換式網路。但隨著去年底DECT Forum正式對外宣佈新的全球寬頻家庭聯網技術CAT-iq，家用無繩電話產品也終於走進了互聯網時代。
CAT-iq融合了寬頻互聯網和成熟可靠的DECT電話技術，它可以為整個家庭提供有QoS保證的聲音服務。基於該技術的全新設計的無繩電話將可以直接連接到寬頻互聯網上，從而使得新一代無繩電話在進行VoIP通話時能擁有盡可能自然的聲音品質。新的CAT-iq器件還將使得喇叭擴音器的設計和性能可媲美昂貴的會議系統，而且沒有相應的高成本。
除此之外，CAT-iq技術的興起還將促進2大應用產品(智慧手機和家庭閘道)的更新換代。智慧手機將開始集成CAT-iq技術，以使得手機一進入家庭應用環境就從蜂窩通信系統自動切換到CAT-iq家用無繩電話系統進行VoIP通話、可視通話、互聯網流覽或email收發，以最大限度地節約消費成本。家庭閘道也將越來越多地集成CAT-iq介面，因為隨著家庭中PC、筆記型電腦、TV、音響、手機和無繩電話都開始產生上網需求，消費者必然希望有一種產品能夠自動集中管理上述這些設備的上網需求，而這產品就是現在人們逐漸開始瞭解的家庭閘道。
根據市場研究公司IDC的一份報告，到2009年，集成了CAT-iq技術的家庭閘道光在歐洲市場的發展潛力就將達到430億歐元。而且很明顯，未來連接到寬頻互聯網的所有家庭配備家庭閘道產品將是大勢所趨。可見其市場發展潛力之大。
現在已經有下一代家庭閘道供應商在其產品中實現了CAT-iq，而且這一發展也已得到了電信運營商和互聯網服務提供者的推動，不過，它們要求不同供應商開發的CAT-iq產品具備魯棒的互通性。為了滿足這一要求，DECT Forum目前正在考慮建立一個認證程式，以在應用層上確保CAT-iq通信服務的互通性。
CAT-iq是目前全球唯一的支援無線音樂和音訊應用的技術，它可以連接到互聯網以支援音訊流應用，CAT-iq標準將激發從事電話行業的設計工程師開發新一代針對無線家庭通信和娛樂的消費電子產品。例如，下一代家庭中的身歷聲播放系統將既可播放來自家庭中多媒體伺服器的音訊內容，也可通過家庭閘道直接接收和播放來自互聯網的音訊流。
CAT-iq技術還能使無繩電話和其它可擕式設備連接到新興的IMS網路(集成多媒體子系統)。具備這一能力的CAT-iq電話能夠訪問全球各地的黃頁和其它公共電話簿。而且，CAT-iq提供了到互聯網和IMS應用的通用介面，並提供了與新興Web 2.0應用的相容性。
“新的CAT-iq技術標準充分利用了迅猛蔓延擴散的全球互聯網路，推動室內無線通訊和娛樂產品進入一個新的發展時代。消費者、製造商和服務提供者都將受益于高性價比的CAT-iq產品，它們可提供互通性、易用性和突破性的新寬頻應用和功能。”DECT論壇董事長Erich Kamperschroer表示。
CAT-iq技術包含一系列profile，並將一波一波地推出。第一波CAT-iq產品將於今年年中推出，以下應用profile計畫在2009年前分批推出。1. 寬頻語音(具備基本互通性)：高性價比無繩電話，帶基本電話服務和最低限度的補充服務功能。2. 互聯網資料和音訊流：此類產品可以直接訪問互聯網，並提供像即時音訊流這樣的應用，它允許欣賞全球各種不同的互聯網無線電廣播服務。3. 寬頻語音(具備增強型互通性)：多功能無繩電話應用，帶更多的補充服務功能。4. 智能聯網：提供自動配置和自我管理功能，以使得消費者很容易對產品進行安裝和使用。
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Wi-Fi手機前途看淡 CAT-iq手機將成熱點
Wi-Fi手機前途看淡 CAT-iq手機將成熱點
http://www.sina.com.cn 2007年06月29日 14:35 pconline太平洋電腦網
西門子英國家用及企業通信設備部門主任John Smitch近日接受媒體採訪時表示，提供僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機產品將不被市場接受。
僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機問世已經有兩年時間了，其最初定位為在具有Wi-Fi網路的環境下通過內置軟體連接Skype等互聯網電話服務提供者從而實現語音通話等功能。但由於具有蜂窩網和Wi-Fi連接功能的雙模手機不斷湧現，僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機的前途黯淡。
Smith表示“我們曾盡最大努力把Wi-Fi手機打入市場，但其在市場上的表現遠沒有之前所預計的那樣好。晶片的售價和電池的容量決定了這種手機不能被大眾所接受。”Smith表示，現在的雙模手機已經成功解決了這個問題。
Smith預測，未來整合了3G和CAT-iq(互聯網和高品質先進無繩技術的簡稱)功能的手機將成為潮流。CAT-iq是最新版本的DECT(高級數位無繩通訊)標準。在DECT的語音功能中加入IP功能，將能夠提供高品質的語音服務。同時，由於該技術使用1.9GHz頻帶，所以不會像Wi-Fi和微波那樣共同使用2.4GHz頻帶從而造成混亂。
Smith表示“雖然CAT-iq是為家用電話所設計的，但由於其與UMTS(3G)網路的頻帶寬度一樣，因此很容易就可以研發出支援UMTS/CAT-iq雙網路的手機。”他預測，這種 雙模手機將於2012年問世。Smith認為雖然CAT-iq手機主要針對個人用戶，但其也可以在商務市場上分一份羹。特別是對於那些需要進行高品質語音會議的小企業使用者來說用處最大。Smith最後談到，西門子公司的首款整合了CAT-iq技術的產品將于未來的幾個月內上市銷售。
作者：Phoneme
http://www.sina.com.cn 2007年06月29日 14:35 pconline太平洋電腦網
西門子英國家用及企業通信設備部門主任John Smitch近日接受媒體採訪時表示，提供僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機產品將不被市場接受。
僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機問世已經有兩年時間了，其最初定位為在具有Wi-Fi網路的環境下通過內置軟體連接Skype等互聯網電話服務提供者從而實現語音通話等功能。但由於具有蜂窩網和Wi-Fi連接功能的雙模手機不斷湧現，僅具有Wi-Fi網路連接功能的手機的前途黯淡。
Smith表示“我們曾盡最大努力把Wi-Fi手機打入市場，但其在市場上的表現遠沒有之前所預計的那樣好。晶片的售價和電池的容量決定了這種手機不能被大眾所接受。”Smith表示，現在的雙模手機已經成功解決了這個問題。
Smith預測，未來整合了3G和CAT-iq(互聯網和高品質先進無繩技術的簡稱)功能的手機將成為潮流。CAT-iq是最新版本的DECT(高級數位無繩通訊)標準。在DECT的語音功能中加入IP功能，將能夠提供高品質的語音服務。同時，由於該技術使用1.9GHz頻帶，所以不會像Wi-Fi和微波那樣共同使用2.4GHz頻帶從而造成混亂。
Smith表示“雖然CAT-iq是為家用電話所設計的，但由於其與UMTS(3G)網路的頻帶寬度一樣，因此很容易就可以研發出支援UMTS/CAT-iq雙網路的手機。”他預測，這種 雙模手機將於2012年問世。Smith認為雖然CAT-iq手機主要針對個人用戶，但其也可以在商務市場上分一份羹。特別是對於那些需要進行高品質語音會議的小企業使用者來說用處最大。Smith最後談到，西門子公司的首款整合了CAT-iq技術的產品將于未來的幾個月內上市銷售。
作者：Phoneme
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
100 ranking of the VoIP service provider
VoIP Provider Ranking
9 Mutual Phone
10 VoIPJet
5 Buzzer (Canada)
6 VoIPGo (Canada)
7 Yahoo Voice
14 Viper
16 Gafachi
17 Teliax
18 Best
21 Axvoice
24 eFonica
27 viaTalk
28 CallontheNet
29 Voxee.com
32 inPhonex
33 Go2Cll
37 Talqer
38 DingoTel
39 VoIP.com
45 QuantumVoice
47 Click4NetPhone
49 GizmoProject
54 Rubicom
55 Packet8
58 StanaPhone
59 Voiceral
60 Lunaphone
63 ITP
64 sipTalk
68 GlobalTel
71 Lingo
72 DiGiLinear
73 Globalinx
74 OnyxConcept
75 ZingoTel
76 TerraCall
77 VoiceEclipse
78 ZiVVA
79 AT&T
80 SpectraVoice (Canada)
83 Vonage
84 Snaptel
85 MyPhoneCompany
86 TotalCall
87 BroadVoice
89 PCCall
96 Phoneopia
99 Soyo (Canada)
9 Mutual Phone
10 VoIPJet
5 Buzzer (Canada)
6 VoIPGo (Canada)
7 Yahoo Voice
14 Viper
16 Gafachi
17 Teliax
18 Best
21 Axvoice
24 eFonica
27 viaTalk
28 CallontheNet
29 Voxee.com
32 inPhonex
33 Go2Cll
37 Talqer
38 DingoTel
39 VoIP.com
45 QuantumVoice
47 Click4NetPhone
49 GizmoProject
54 Rubicom
55 Packet8
58 StanaPhone
59 Voiceral
60 Lunaphone
63 ITP
64 sipTalk
68 GlobalTel
71 Lingo
72 DiGiLinear
73 Globalinx
74 OnyxConcept
75 ZingoTel
76 TerraCall
77 VoiceEclipse
78 ZiVVA
79 AT&T
80 SpectraVoice (Canada)
83 Vonage
84 Snaptel
85 MyPhoneCompany
86 TotalCall
87 BroadVoice
89 PCCall
96 Phoneopia
99 Soyo (Canada)
The Best Alternatives to Vonage
The Best Alternatives to Vonage
Though their prices may be similar, these 4 VoIP competitors distinguish themselves with exciting features.
Robert Poe on May 16, 2007
1. VOIP.COM
http://www.voip.com/l7b/
One of the rising stars of the business, voip.com offers unlimited North American calling for $19.95 a month for residential users, or $16.95 a month if you pay $203.40 for a year in advance. You can also get 200 minutes a month for a mere $9.95. The adapter to hook your standard home phone to your broadband Internet connection comes free. Alternatively, you can use a soft phone plan for $14.95 a month for unlimited calling from your PC using a headphone and downloadable client, or pay $3.95 for 100 minutes a month.
But voip.com isn't just about price, it's also about all the other features and capabilities only VoIP can provide. For example, Main Number ($9.95 a month) gives you a single number that will ring on all your phones, whether work, residential or mobile, when someone calls it. Voicemail ($4.95) lets you access your messages by phone or Web browser, and have them emailed to your computer. Mobile Line 2 ($8.75) provides an additional number that will ring your cellphone, allowing you to differentiate between personal and business calls, for example.
Naturally, international rates undercut most traditional carriers'. Voip.com will also launch business services soon, as well as a prepaid connect-a-call service (currently in beta) called Make a call.
2. SUNROCKET https://www.sunrocket.com/
3. LINGO
Ravi Bhatia: President
tel: 703-902-2800
www.lingo.com
Keeping up its end of the annual price war, Lingo offers unlimited North American calling (like the others, it also includes Puerto Rico in the package), for $195 a year. On a monthly basis, unlimited calling costs $21.95, which includes 21 international countries as well, while 500 minutes run $14.95. A $34.95 international package gives you unlimited North American calling plus 300 minutes to most overseas locations. Additional domestic numbers cost $4.95 a month, with international numbers, a great feature for those with a lot of overseas relatives, adding a mere $10.00 on top of other charges. Lingo also has small-business plans starting at $49.95.
3. PACKET8 http://linkshare.packet8.net/
4. ViaTalk Company www.viatalk.com
5 verizon www22.verizon.com
6 InPhonex http://www.inphonex.com/
Though their prices may be similar, these 4 VoIP competitors distinguish themselves with exciting features.
Robert Poe on May 16, 2007
1. VOIP.COM
http://www.voip.com/l7b/
One of the rising stars of the business, voip.com offers unlimited North American calling for $19.95 a month for residential users, or $16.95 a month if you pay $203.40 for a year in advance. You can also get 200 minutes a month for a mere $9.95. The adapter to hook your standard home phone to your broadband Internet connection comes free. Alternatively, you can use a soft phone plan for $14.95 a month for unlimited calling from your PC using a headphone and downloadable client, or pay $3.95 for 100 minutes a month.
But voip.com isn't just about price, it's also about all the other features and capabilities only VoIP can provide. For example, Main Number ($9.95 a month) gives you a single number that will ring on all your phones, whether work, residential or mobile, when someone calls it. Voicemail ($4.95) lets you access your messages by phone or Web browser, and have them emailed to your computer. Mobile Line 2 ($8.75) provides an additional number that will ring your cellphone, allowing you to differentiate between personal and business calls, for example.
Naturally, international rates undercut most traditional carriers'. Voip.com will also launch business services soon, as well as a prepaid connect-a-call service (currently in beta) called Make a call.
2. SUNROCKET https://www.sunrocket.com/
3. LINGO
Ravi Bhatia: President
tel: 703-902-2800
www.lingo.com
Keeping up its end of the annual price war, Lingo offers unlimited North American calling (like the others, it also includes Puerto Rico in the package), for $195 a year. On a monthly basis, unlimited calling costs $21.95, which includes 21 international countries as well, while 500 minutes run $14.95. A $34.95 international package gives you unlimited North American calling plus 300 minutes to most overseas locations. Additional domestic numbers cost $4.95 a month, with international numbers, a great feature for those with a lot of overseas relatives, adding a mere $10.00 on top of other charges. Lingo also has small-business plans starting at $49.95.
3. PACKET8 http://linkshare.packet8.net/
4. ViaTalk Company www.viatalk.com
5 verizon www22.verizon.com
6 InPhonex http://www.inphonex.com/
25 Most Interesting VoIP Startups
25 Most Interesting VoIP Startups
(10 Comments)
This list presents our choices for some of the most exciting VoIP companies and products to watch.
By Jim Higdon on February 12th, 2007
If you’ve only heard about Vonage and Skype when it comes to VoIP, you’ve only scratched the surface. Dozens of startup companies from the U.S., Canada and Europe are bringing out innovative IP telephony products – from hooking up your cell phone, to the company phone system (free minutes!), to phones that switch from cellular signals to WiFi instantly. In fact, some of these startups are are over 12 to 18 months old and on the verge of being mature businesses. Here are our picks for the Top 25 new VoIP companies set to change the way we all work and do business… and the products are pretty cool, too.
________________________________________
VONAGE STALKERS: RESIDENTIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS
SunRocket
Wouldn’t it be great to be the fastest-growing fish in a giant tank of sharks? That’s SunRocket’s position in the VoIP market.
While the company still has a relatively small customer base compared to Vonage or its corporate competition, SunRocket has become the fastest-growing company to offer residential VoIP services by focusing on customer service, and trying to be a phone company that people actually like.
How are they doing that? Sunrocket recently announced a new calling plan that drops rates to Asia to as low as one cent per minute. Although this plan will likely benefit mostly West Coast businesses and residential subscribers with relatives living in Asia, at 90 percent less than other major VoIP calling plans, it’s likely to be an effective wedge into the VoIP subscriber market.
As SunRocket continues to grow, it will either become a shark of it own or a tasty meal for one of its giant opponents to devour.
ViaTalk
Flat-rate phone service so cheap that you pay for it by the year instead of by the month – that’s ViaTalk’s angle, and it seems to be catching on.
Leveraging the 50,000 website customers hosted by parent company HostRocket, ViaTalk has quickly become a major player in the VoIP service industry with customers in 2,200 markets throughout all 50 States.
ViaTalk offers phone rates as low as $199 per year, with a year for free. Plus, ViaTalk provides all the features customers expect from traditional phone companies like e911, caller ID and voicemail, plus fax service.
COOL IT SOLUTIONS: STREAMLINED COMMUNICATION
FirstHand Technologies
Where’s your boss? On her mobile phone and out of the office – again! So how do you transfer her calls? Or patch her into the important, last-minute conference call? FirstHand Technologies has figured it out.
Based in Ottawa, FirstHand helps your IT department integrate mobile devices within the company’s phone system and provides single-number reachability for executives and sales staff on the go. Firsthand, formerly called SIPquest, changed its name in May 2006 when it secured $7 million in Series C funding.
OneConnect, a division of Globalive Communications, has been using a trial version of FirstHand’s Mobile Assistant for Blackberry devices since 2006, and intends to purchase the full commercial service in the first quarter of 2007. With the company’s release of its Enterprise Mobility Gateway, which allows access to features previously only available through their desktop phones, FirstHand is creating more services for more platforms. It's a company to watch as it develops.
GrandCentral
To win at this game, you gotta build a better mousetrap.
GrandCentral took the same problem solved by LogiTell and FirstHand – integrating mobile phone users into the office’s phone system – and found possibly the simplest solution with the widest potential impact to the workplace. Their final answer: all you need is one phone number.
Using VoIP plumbing, GrandCentral routes your calls so all of your phones ring when you get a call and also consolidates your voicemail using a handy Web interface. This interface allows you to organize your contacts into groups and setup automatic behaviors and filters for each incoming phone number.
When you answer a GrandCentral call, the interface first tells you who’s calling, then gives you several options. They offer the standard features, accept it or send it to voicemail. But also offer unique features including the option to accept and record the call, or GrandCentral’s trademarked ListenIn feature. With ListenIn, listen in real time as your caller leaves a voicemail with the ability to take the call at any time, you can also press 4 at any time during the call to start recording.
GrandCentral isn’t yet available outside the U.S. or even in every area code, but it’s a company on the move.
LignUp
As Abraham Lincoln once said, “A VoIP infrastructure divided against itself cannot stand.”
LignUp, a California based company with offices in Utah, China and Japan, has taken the 16th president’s words to heart and designed solutions to support, integrate and optimize a company’s IT architecture upon which its voice and data networks are built. The service is currently deployed in over 140 organizations around the world.
LignUp delivers a converged IP communications platform that includes hosted telephony, voice mail, unified messaging, auto attendant and other Web applications. The 100 percent software, native-SIP platform enables solution integrators and service providers to quickly create unique, high margin VoIP applications and services. In June 2006, LignUp secured a new round of funding worth nearly $10 million.
LignUp has been named to the Pulver 100 list of leading private VoIP companies, and has been recognized for innovation with the TMC Labs Innovation Award and the EuroStart Channel Excellence Award.
As the VoIP market organically grows, companies will need LignUp to keep their IP architecture humming.
Logitel
Good minds think alike, but LogiTel thinks faster, it was the first company to introduce complete integration of cell phones within a VoIP network.
Engineered to combine the highest reliability with ease of use, LogiTel products integrate VoIP, TDM and mobile capabilities with intelligent user interfaces. The result is an easy to implement, robust and flexible solution, backed by a commitment to superior customer support.
Their unique interfaces make LogiTel’s VoIP and wireless products easy to install and manage—so you don’t need to be a back office genius to use them.
MORE COOL IT SOLUTIONS: CONNECTING CUSTOMERS
BlueNote Networks
When guests enter their rooms at the four-diamond Seaport Hotel in Boston, they find a touch screen and voice-activated Web portal where the telephone used to be. The new VoIP system, by BlueNote Networks allows guests to place free VoIP-based local and domestic long distance calls, view current hotel and local attraction info, video and audio entertainment, travel updates and access to Web-based e-mail.
Founded in January 2005, BlueNote Networks deploys interactive real-time communication services for business customers in a new and compelling way. BlueNote Networks designed its award-winning SessionSuite, which allows businesses and their partners to embed interactive real-time communication services into a range of applications, web sites and internal business processes.
BlueNote Networks' innovative leadership has helped the company raise over $23 million in venture funding from investors that include Commonwealth Capital, Fidelity Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners.
DiVitas Networks
Next year, you will own a phone that works on a cellular connection, but switches to WiFi when it detects a network, allowing seamless VoIP-to-cell handoff. DiVitas Networks is the company that is making it possible.
While it’s a dream-come-true to cell phone users with residential WiFi, DiVitas is also solving business problems – like extending enterprise security, management and cost control to mobile communications. Users communicate their availability status simply by being detectable by the network, whether the underlying network is cellular, WiFi, Internet/IP WAN,or wireline.
DiVitas will be in the middle of the fight for the voice over WiFi market, and it's worth watching to see if they can perform better than the competition.
Fonality
Sometimes your best ideas come when you’re working on something else. Fonality never intended to provide superior IP PBX phone systems to 2,000 clients in 25 countries and all 50 states.
The startup’s original mission was as a residential VoIP provider. As the company’s phones started ringing, the startup’s founders were shocked at the price of basic phone systems, so they built their own in-house IP PBX network, adding features as time went on.
PBXtra has undergone a major overhaul to introduce scalability, security and ease-of-use.
Today's PBXtra is a robust and economical product built upon a Linux backbone, with the Asterisk platform. At the end of 2006, over 40,000 business users had placed more than 50 million calls using Fonality’s system.
GotVMail
Don’t let the name fool you. GotVMail is much more than just voicemail.
GotVMail understands what large telephony providers do not, the entrepreneur and very small business market, often with a workforce of one. GotVMail provides a nationwide toll-free or global local telephone number, and a customized main greeting that enhances the image, productivity and professionalism of small businesses with 1 - 10 employees for as little as $9.95 a month.
Incoming calls can be routed to multiple employee or department mailboxes using a dial-by-name directory, and can be forwarded or transferred to any phone, anywhere. It also provides "one stop" Web and Email delivery of all voice and fax messages, with an unlimited number of incoming calls so callers never hear a busy signal.
Iotum
When the phone rings, who is it? Is the caller scheduled to be part of a teleconference? Has the person called three times this hour? Is the caller your boss, or someone else who ought to override your Do Not Disturb feature?
Iotum, a VoIP service on the Asterisk platform, tries to define the relevance of a VoIP call as it arrives at your desk.
Iotum is worth watching because the company has just released Talk-Now, a next-generation product for the Blackberry. IT's potentially revolutionary because it lets users share their availability with some, but not all of their contacts, and eliminates phone tag by allowing users to know when the people they need to talk to are available to take their calls.
Switchvox
The VoIP field is so crowded that companies are even sharing biographical anecdotes. Switchvox entered the VoIP market the same accidental way as Fonality.
As it grew, Switchvox discovered that business phone systems were outrageously expensive and required a small army to maintain. They also found that other PBX operating systems were not robust enough, so Switchvox created their own system on the Asterisk platform. Today, Switchvox is a leading provider of PBX and VoIP phone systems for small-to medium-sized businesses.
TalkPlus
What can you use for prank calls, online dating and running your small business? A virtual phone number from TalkPlus.
When you sign up with TalkPlus, you’ll be able to choose one or more virtual phone numbers, which can be local to any location in any country, and point to your mobile phone. A local call placed in Europe could ring to your cell phone in New York.
You also have a management center that lets you customize your call-screening, black- or white-list, privacy, contact and voicemail options. You can have an office number that goes directly to voicemail after 5pm and a general phone number that you give to your family and friends. Use another phone number when you fill out applications and send the telemarketers to voicemail.
TalkPlus has teamed up with an online dating service to give users the opportunity to talk with each other without revealing their actual phone numbers. Theoretically, you could have a different virtual number for each dating partner. The service has yet to be spelled out, but should cost roughly $10 monthly.
Whaleback
Whaleback has designed a phone service for the small and medium business market, which it defines as any company needing between five and 1,500 phone stations.
Whaleback offers the first business phone solution built from the ground up for broadband to help reduce operating costs of small businesses. Its CrystalBlue Voice Service includes a separate "voice only" broadband connection inclusive in the monthly price; and the entire service is monitored and maintained around the clock.
The company says it allows SMBs to take advantage of robust voice features designed specifically for their needs, without the expense or headaches involved in managing telephony infrastructure. Whaleback sells the same service, whether you need ten phones or a thousand and ten.
SKYPE KILLERS
Jajah
Jajah made a name for itself when it released a Web-based callback system, a sort of long-distance run-around. Type in your number and the number you want to call, and Jajah calls you both, connecting the call via VoIP to your existing phone line. In early 2006, Jajah hired Yair Goldfinger, the mastermind behind Internet chat pioneer ICQ. With Goldfinger, Jajah has stepped up its competition to Skype, Google Talk and the Gizmo Project.
The startup recently expanded this service to let customers set up VoIP calls from their cell phones. Now, you can use Jajah from nearly every phone in the world. Jajah has also announced that it will support Apple’s iPhone when it hits the market in the summer of 2007.
Jajah is worth watching because it could someday be a Skype killer.
The Gizmo Project
When you’re competing against Skype, available in 27 languages and used by millions of people in nearly every country around the world for free, you don’t just need a product or an idea, you need a project.
Gizmo Project, developed by SIPPhone , is competing by building a VoIM product that works with Jabber and Asterisk. Gizmo has also added a voice component to the LiveJoural blogging community, increasing web-user interactivity and a whole new frontier in voice-over-Internet culture.
Calling out to a land-line phone costs a penny a minute; calling in costs $3 per month and Gizmo has made its All Calls Free plan available to businesses worldwide.
Nimbuzz
Sure, Skype has taken IM and turned it into a telephone, but only if you and your friend are both Skype users. But what if you want to call your MSN friend from your cell phone?
Nimbuzz is on top of it.
Founded in the Netherlands in 2004, Nimbuzz is revolutionizing mobile communications by allowing users to chat or call other Nimbuzz users, Google Talk users and MSN users across the world – potentially reaching over 500 million Internet capable mobile phones and BlackBerries already in use worldwide – without using VoIP.
Nimbuzz Voice depends on the availability of local access numbers, available in over 35 countries already, and is available for mobile phones, mobile web browsers and as a Windows-based PC client. It’s competing against similar services offered by Fring, Talkster, Vyke, iSkoot, Rebtel, Hullo and others.
Wengo
Not to be outdone by the Gizmo Project, French-based Wengo started its own project, the OpenWengo Project, which takes Gizmo’s Asterisk-basked platform one step further by making Wengo’s software open source and its services free.
While free may be a dubious profit-making strategy, it’s also a great way to generate a subscriber base while competing against Skype’s free service. Not only that, but by employing an open-source strategy to build Wengo’s VoIP architecture, the French startup is basically getting it’s R&D for free too. If Wengo can build a mousetrap better than Skype, then the subscriber base will exist for an array of revenue streams.
Jaxtr
Click-to-call – soon it will be a common link in your email sig file, on any blog you read and on any web advertisement that you ignore. These will all be brought to you by companies like Jaxtr.
Jaxtr is a social communications company based in Palo Alto, Calif., and founded with the mission of bringing voice to social networks and blogs. With the free j=Jaxtr service, users link their phones to their online network to hear from callers worldwide, while keeping their existing phone numbers private.
When users add their Jaxtr widget to a social networking profile or include a Jaxtr link in their email signature file, they make it easy for the recipient to call them. The caller clicks on the link or widget, enters his own phone number and then his phone rings. After he picks up the phone, Jaxtr connects him with the friend who sent the link, so the two can talk live using their existing wireless or landline phones for free.
As social networking sites become more media-rich, the appetite for Jaxtr’s Voice-to-Blog widgets will only grow.
MOBILE VOIP
Fring
Avi Shechter, the man behind Fring, attended the Davos World Economic Summit in 2007 where he told world leaders about a future where VoIP telephony would bring cheap, flat-rate calls to the whole world.
He built Fring from a concept of giving people the benefits of the Internet combined with the user-culture of mobile telephony. Rising to the challenge, Fring allows users to make free mobile calls, send instant messages to other Fring users and communicate with PC-based VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Talk.
The Fring Web site is a basic, text-only page with entry windows for your phone number and email address. You sign up, and download Fring onto your phone like a ringtone.
iSkoot
iSkoot has designed a magic key to unlock the door between the common cell phone and crystal-clear, yet dirt-cheap, IP voice networks. With iSkoot, users can make unlimited, superior quality voice calls, via next-generation software from their cell phones without the need for a computer or a WiFi hotspot.
And to top it off, it’s been certified by Skype. In January 2007, Skype confirmed that iSkoot met its usability and quality standards, making iSkoot the first third-party mobile client to make the grade.
Rebtel
For just $4 a month, wireless subscribers in the U.S. Can now call 38 countries, including France, the U.K. and Germany, and talk — for as long as you want — for only the cost of a local cell phone call.
What? That’s right. Welcome to Rebtel.
Rebtel is a Swedish company founded in January 2006. Within a year, Rebtel services has been made available in more than 36 countries.
Rebtel offers a range of international mobile telephony services at local rates. These services are all based on a system that allows people to use domestic numbers when calling abroad and international calls at local prices. Rebtel customers can make cheaper, better and easier calls abroad using local numbers for global friends and business partners. All you need is an ordinary mobile phone. There are no downloads, you don't have to buy a new mobile phone or SIM card, use a headset, switch operator or install any technology.
Tello
All you need to get a square peg in a round hole is a big enough hammer. Tello has built a tool that ties together disparate real-time communications applications so a customer can communicate with anyone instantly, whether it is using AOL's Instant Messenger or Sprint's ReadyLink push-to-talk application.
Tello's real-time services work across existing IP-enabled systems, enabling people to locate and communicate with co-workers, customers, suppliers, friends and perfect strangers.
Tello offers services to businesses and directly to individual users.
TelTel
TelTel has introduced the first flip phone for WiFi, which isn’t quite as cool as cell-to-WiFi convergence phones like the Nokia N80-IE, but it’s close.
Founded in 2003, TelTel provides Internet telephony services on the global TelTel managed, SIP-based, PsipTN™. It's capable of carrying voice, media, contents and a variety of hosted services, while providing interoperability with numerous IP end points. TelTel hosts the world’s largest SIP-based Internet telephony user community, with over 1.8 million registered users worldwide. In March 2006, TelTel secured $8.8 million in VC capital to improve its global VoIP network.
Truphone
Truphone is doing its part to merge the celluar and WiFi worlds. They now offer VoIP services that work on certain Nokia phones. With every phone call, you can toggle between dialing out on a WiFi or cellular network.
For people with cell-phone-only lifestyles, Truphone’s WiFi phone stands to save them bundles on monthly cellular plans.
In early January 2007, Truphone secured $24.5 million in new funding, which should give it the gas in the tank it needs to position itself in the coming war between WiFi and cellular networks.
(10 Comments)
This list presents our choices for some of the most exciting VoIP companies and products to watch.
By Jim Higdon on February 12th, 2007
If you’ve only heard about Vonage and Skype when it comes to VoIP, you’ve only scratched the surface. Dozens of startup companies from the U.S., Canada and Europe are bringing out innovative IP telephony products – from hooking up your cell phone, to the company phone system (free minutes!), to phones that switch from cellular signals to WiFi instantly. In fact, some of these startups are are over 12 to 18 months old and on the verge of being mature businesses. Here are our picks for the Top 25 new VoIP companies set to change the way we all work and do business… and the products are pretty cool, too.
________________________________________
VONAGE STALKERS: RESIDENTIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS
SunRocket
Wouldn’t it be great to be the fastest-growing fish in a giant tank of sharks? That’s SunRocket’s position in the VoIP market.
While the company still has a relatively small customer base compared to Vonage or its corporate competition, SunRocket has become the fastest-growing company to offer residential VoIP services by focusing on customer service, and trying to be a phone company that people actually like.
How are they doing that? Sunrocket recently announced a new calling plan that drops rates to Asia to as low as one cent per minute. Although this plan will likely benefit mostly West Coast businesses and residential subscribers with relatives living in Asia, at 90 percent less than other major VoIP calling plans, it’s likely to be an effective wedge into the VoIP subscriber market.
As SunRocket continues to grow, it will either become a shark of it own or a tasty meal for one of its giant opponents to devour.
ViaTalk
Flat-rate phone service so cheap that you pay for it by the year instead of by the month – that’s ViaTalk’s angle, and it seems to be catching on.
Leveraging the 50,000 website customers hosted by parent company HostRocket, ViaTalk has quickly become a major player in the VoIP service industry with customers in 2,200 markets throughout all 50 States.
ViaTalk offers phone rates as low as $199 per year, with a year for free. Plus, ViaTalk provides all the features customers expect from traditional phone companies like e911, caller ID and voicemail, plus fax service.
COOL IT SOLUTIONS: STREAMLINED COMMUNICATION
FirstHand Technologies
Where’s your boss? On her mobile phone and out of the office – again! So how do you transfer her calls? Or patch her into the important, last-minute conference call? FirstHand Technologies has figured it out.
Based in Ottawa, FirstHand helps your IT department integrate mobile devices within the company’s phone system and provides single-number reachability for executives and sales staff on the go. Firsthand, formerly called SIPquest, changed its name in May 2006 when it secured $7 million in Series C funding.
OneConnect, a division of Globalive Communications, has been using a trial version of FirstHand’s Mobile Assistant for Blackberry devices since 2006, and intends to purchase the full commercial service in the first quarter of 2007. With the company’s release of its Enterprise Mobility Gateway, which allows access to features previously only available through their desktop phones, FirstHand is creating more services for more platforms. It's a company to watch as it develops.
GrandCentral
To win at this game, you gotta build a better mousetrap.
GrandCentral took the same problem solved by LogiTell and FirstHand – integrating mobile phone users into the office’s phone system – and found possibly the simplest solution with the widest potential impact to the workplace. Their final answer: all you need is one phone number.
Using VoIP plumbing, GrandCentral routes your calls so all of your phones ring when you get a call and also consolidates your voicemail using a handy Web interface. This interface allows you to organize your contacts into groups and setup automatic behaviors and filters for each incoming phone number.
When you answer a GrandCentral call, the interface first tells you who’s calling, then gives you several options. They offer the standard features, accept it or send it to voicemail. But also offer unique features including the option to accept and record the call, or GrandCentral’s trademarked ListenIn feature. With ListenIn, listen in real time as your caller leaves a voicemail with the ability to take the call at any time, you can also press 4 at any time during the call to start recording.
GrandCentral isn’t yet available outside the U.S. or even in every area code, but it’s a company on the move.
LignUp
As Abraham Lincoln once said, “A VoIP infrastructure divided against itself cannot stand.”
LignUp, a California based company with offices in Utah, China and Japan, has taken the 16th president’s words to heart and designed solutions to support, integrate and optimize a company’s IT architecture upon which its voice and data networks are built. The service is currently deployed in over 140 organizations around the world.
LignUp delivers a converged IP communications platform that includes hosted telephony, voice mail, unified messaging, auto attendant and other Web applications. The 100 percent software, native-SIP platform enables solution integrators and service providers to quickly create unique, high margin VoIP applications and services. In June 2006, LignUp secured a new round of funding worth nearly $10 million.
LignUp has been named to the Pulver 100 list of leading private VoIP companies, and has been recognized for innovation with the TMC Labs Innovation Award and the EuroStart Channel Excellence Award.
As the VoIP market organically grows, companies will need LignUp to keep their IP architecture humming.
Logitel
Good minds think alike, but LogiTel thinks faster, it was the first company to introduce complete integration of cell phones within a VoIP network.
Engineered to combine the highest reliability with ease of use, LogiTel products integrate VoIP, TDM and mobile capabilities with intelligent user interfaces. The result is an easy to implement, robust and flexible solution, backed by a commitment to superior customer support.
Their unique interfaces make LogiTel’s VoIP and wireless products easy to install and manage—so you don’t need to be a back office genius to use them.
MORE COOL IT SOLUTIONS: CONNECTING CUSTOMERS
BlueNote Networks
When guests enter their rooms at the four-diamond Seaport Hotel in Boston, they find a touch screen and voice-activated Web portal where the telephone used to be. The new VoIP system, by BlueNote Networks allows guests to place free VoIP-based local and domestic long distance calls, view current hotel and local attraction info, video and audio entertainment, travel updates and access to Web-based e-mail.
Founded in January 2005, BlueNote Networks deploys interactive real-time communication services for business customers in a new and compelling way. BlueNote Networks designed its award-winning SessionSuite, which allows businesses and their partners to embed interactive real-time communication services into a range of applications, web sites and internal business processes.
BlueNote Networks' innovative leadership has helped the company raise over $23 million in venture funding from investors that include Commonwealth Capital, Fidelity Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners.
DiVitas Networks
Next year, you will own a phone that works on a cellular connection, but switches to WiFi when it detects a network, allowing seamless VoIP-to-cell handoff. DiVitas Networks is the company that is making it possible.
While it’s a dream-come-true to cell phone users with residential WiFi, DiVitas is also solving business problems – like extending enterprise security, management and cost control to mobile communications. Users communicate their availability status simply by being detectable by the network, whether the underlying network is cellular, WiFi, Internet/IP WAN,or wireline.
DiVitas will be in the middle of the fight for the voice over WiFi market, and it's worth watching to see if they can perform better than the competition.
Fonality
Sometimes your best ideas come when you’re working on something else. Fonality never intended to provide superior IP PBX phone systems to 2,000 clients in 25 countries and all 50 states.
The startup’s original mission was as a residential VoIP provider. As the company’s phones started ringing, the startup’s founders were shocked at the price of basic phone systems, so they built their own in-house IP PBX network, adding features as time went on.
PBXtra has undergone a major overhaul to introduce scalability, security and ease-of-use.
Today's PBXtra is a robust and economical product built upon a Linux backbone, with the Asterisk platform. At the end of 2006, over 40,000 business users had placed more than 50 million calls using Fonality’s system.
GotVMail
Don’t let the name fool you. GotVMail is much more than just voicemail.
GotVMail understands what large telephony providers do not, the entrepreneur and very small business market, often with a workforce of one. GotVMail provides a nationwide toll-free or global local telephone number, and a customized main greeting that enhances the image, productivity and professionalism of small businesses with 1 - 10 employees for as little as $9.95 a month.
Incoming calls can be routed to multiple employee or department mailboxes using a dial-by-name directory, and can be forwarded or transferred to any phone, anywhere. It also provides "one stop" Web and Email delivery of all voice and fax messages, with an unlimited number of incoming calls so callers never hear a busy signal.
Iotum
When the phone rings, who is it? Is the caller scheduled to be part of a teleconference? Has the person called three times this hour? Is the caller your boss, or someone else who ought to override your Do Not Disturb feature?
Iotum, a VoIP service on the Asterisk platform, tries to define the relevance of a VoIP call as it arrives at your desk.
Iotum is worth watching because the company has just released Talk-Now, a next-generation product for the Blackberry. IT's potentially revolutionary because it lets users share their availability with some, but not all of their contacts, and eliminates phone tag by allowing users to know when the people they need to talk to are available to take their calls.
Switchvox
The VoIP field is so crowded that companies are even sharing biographical anecdotes. Switchvox entered the VoIP market the same accidental way as Fonality.
As it grew, Switchvox discovered that business phone systems were outrageously expensive and required a small army to maintain. They also found that other PBX operating systems were not robust enough, so Switchvox created their own system on the Asterisk platform. Today, Switchvox is a leading provider of PBX and VoIP phone systems for small-to medium-sized businesses.
TalkPlus
What can you use for prank calls, online dating and running your small business? A virtual phone number from TalkPlus.
When you sign up with TalkPlus, you’ll be able to choose one or more virtual phone numbers, which can be local to any location in any country, and point to your mobile phone. A local call placed in Europe could ring to your cell phone in New York.
You also have a management center that lets you customize your call-screening, black- or white-list, privacy, contact and voicemail options. You can have an office number that goes directly to voicemail after 5pm and a general phone number that you give to your family and friends. Use another phone number when you fill out applications and send the telemarketers to voicemail.
TalkPlus has teamed up with an online dating service to give users the opportunity to talk with each other without revealing their actual phone numbers. Theoretically, you could have a different virtual number for each dating partner. The service has yet to be spelled out, but should cost roughly $10 monthly.
Whaleback
Whaleback has designed a phone service for the small and medium business market, which it defines as any company needing between five and 1,500 phone stations.
Whaleback offers the first business phone solution built from the ground up for broadband to help reduce operating costs of small businesses. Its CrystalBlue Voice Service includes a separate "voice only" broadband connection inclusive in the monthly price; and the entire service is monitored and maintained around the clock.
The company says it allows SMBs to take advantage of robust voice features designed specifically for their needs, without the expense or headaches involved in managing telephony infrastructure. Whaleback sells the same service, whether you need ten phones or a thousand and ten.
SKYPE KILLERS
Jajah
Jajah made a name for itself when it released a Web-based callback system, a sort of long-distance run-around. Type in your number and the number you want to call, and Jajah calls you both, connecting the call via VoIP to your existing phone line. In early 2006, Jajah hired Yair Goldfinger, the mastermind behind Internet chat pioneer ICQ. With Goldfinger, Jajah has stepped up its competition to Skype, Google Talk and the Gizmo Project.
The startup recently expanded this service to let customers set up VoIP calls from their cell phones. Now, you can use Jajah from nearly every phone in the world. Jajah has also announced that it will support Apple’s iPhone when it hits the market in the summer of 2007.
Jajah is worth watching because it could someday be a Skype killer.
The Gizmo Project
When you’re competing against Skype, available in 27 languages and used by millions of people in nearly every country around the world for free, you don’t just need a product or an idea, you need a project.
Gizmo Project, developed by SIPPhone , is competing by building a VoIM product that works with Jabber and Asterisk. Gizmo has also added a voice component to the LiveJoural blogging community, increasing web-user interactivity and a whole new frontier in voice-over-Internet culture.
Calling out to a land-line phone costs a penny a minute; calling in costs $3 per month and Gizmo has made its All Calls Free plan available to businesses worldwide.
Nimbuzz
Sure, Skype has taken IM and turned it into a telephone, but only if you and your friend are both Skype users. But what if you want to call your MSN friend from your cell phone?
Nimbuzz is on top of it.
Founded in the Netherlands in 2004, Nimbuzz is revolutionizing mobile communications by allowing users to chat or call other Nimbuzz users, Google Talk users and MSN users across the world – potentially reaching over 500 million Internet capable mobile phones and BlackBerries already in use worldwide – without using VoIP.
Nimbuzz Voice depends on the availability of local access numbers, available in over 35 countries already, and is available for mobile phones, mobile web browsers and as a Windows-based PC client. It’s competing against similar services offered by Fring, Talkster, Vyke, iSkoot, Rebtel, Hullo and others.
Wengo
Not to be outdone by the Gizmo Project, French-based Wengo started its own project, the OpenWengo Project, which takes Gizmo’s Asterisk-basked platform one step further by making Wengo’s software open source and its services free.
While free may be a dubious profit-making strategy, it’s also a great way to generate a subscriber base while competing against Skype’s free service. Not only that, but by employing an open-source strategy to build Wengo’s VoIP architecture, the French startup is basically getting it’s R&D for free too. If Wengo can build a mousetrap better than Skype, then the subscriber base will exist for an array of revenue streams.
Jaxtr
Click-to-call – soon it will be a common link in your email sig file, on any blog you read and on any web advertisement that you ignore. These will all be brought to you by companies like Jaxtr.
Jaxtr is a social communications company based in Palo Alto, Calif., and founded with the mission of bringing voice to social networks and blogs. With the free j=Jaxtr service, users link their phones to their online network to hear from callers worldwide, while keeping their existing phone numbers private.
When users add their Jaxtr widget to a social networking profile or include a Jaxtr link in their email signature file, they make it easy for the recipient to call them. The caller clicks on the link or widget, enters his own phone number and then his phone rings. After he picks up the phone, Jaxtr connects him with the friend who sent the link, so the two can talk live using their existing wireless or landline phones for free.
As social networking sites become more media-rich, the appetite for Jaxtr’s Voice-to-Blog widgets will only grow.
MOBILE VOIP
Fring
Avi Shechter, the man behind Fring, attended the Davos World Economic Summit in 2007 where he told world leaders about a future where VoIP telephony would bring cheap, flat-rate calls to the whole world.
He built Fring from a concept of giving people the benefits of the Internet combined with the user-culture of mobile telephony. Rising to the challenge, Fring allows users to make free mobile calls, send instant messages to other Fring users and communicate with PC-based VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Talk.
The Fring Web site is a basic, text-only page with entry windows for your phone number and email address. You sign up, and download Fring onto your phone like a ringtone.
iSkoot
iSkoot has designed a magic key to unlock the door between the common cell phone and crystal-clear, yet dirt-cheap, IP voice networks. With iSkoot, users can make unlimited, superior quality voice calls, via next-generation software from their cell phones without the need for a computer or a WiFi hotspot.
And to top it off, it’s been certified by Skype. In January 2007, Skype confirmed that iSkoot met its usability and quality standards, making iSkoot the first third-party mobile client to make the grade.
Rebtel
For just $4 a month, wireless subscribers in the U.S. Can now call 38 countries, including France, the U.K. and Germany, and talk — for as long as you want — for only the cost of a local cell phone call.
What? That’s right. Welcome to Rebtel.
Rebtel is a Swedish company founded in January 2006. Within a year, Rebtel services has been made available in more than 36 countries.
Rebtel offers a range of international mobile telephony services at local rates. These services are all based on a system that allows people to use domestic numbers when calling abroad and international calls at local prices. Rebtel customers can make cheaper, better and easier calls abroad using local numbers for global friends and business partners. All you need is an ordinary mobile phone. There are no downloads, you don't have to buy a new mobile phone or SIM card, use a headset, switch operator or install any technology.
Tello
All you need to get a square peg in a round hole is a big enough hammer. Tello has built a tool that ties together disparate real-time communications applications so a customer can communicate with anyone instantly, whether it is using AOL's Instant Messenger or Sprint's ReadyLink push-to-talk application.
Tello's real-time services work across existing IP-enabled systems, enabling people to locate and communicate with co-workers, customers, suppliers, friends and perfect strangers.
Tello offers services to businesses and directly to individual users.
TelTel
TelTel has introduced the first flip phone for WiFi, which isn’t quite as cool as cell-to-WiFi convergence phones like the Nokia N80-IE, but it’s close.
Founded in 2003, TelTel provides Internet telephony services on the global TelTel managed, SIP-based, PsipTN™. It's capable of carrying voice, media, contents and a variety of hosted services, while providing interoperability with numerous IP end points. TelTel hosts the world’s largest SIP-based Internet telephony user community, with over 1.8 million registered users worldwide. In March 2006, TelTel secured $8.8 million in VC capital to improve its global VoIP network.
Truphone
Truphone is doing its part to merge the celluar and WiFi worlds. They now offer VoIP services that work on certain Nokia phones. With every phone call, you can toggle between dialing out on a WiFi or cellular network.
For people with cell-phone-only lifestyles, Truphone’s WiFi phone stands to save them bundles on monthly cellular plans.
In early January 2007, Truphone secured $24.5 million in new funding, which should give it the gas in the tank it needs to position itself in the coming war between WiFi and cellular networks.
Comcast Tops VOIP Providers in 2006
Comcast Tops VOIP Providers in 2006
ARTICLE DATE: 07.30.07
By Chloe Albanesius
Powered by cable telephony and bundled services, the market for Voice-over-the-Internet Protocol (VoIP) services grew by leaps and bounds in 2006, though some cable customers are unaware exactly how their service works, according to a Monday report from the Yankee Group.
ADVERTISEMENT Though initially plagued by quality concerns, VOIP technology has improved enough in recent years that major cable companies are bundling the service with their cable and Internet offerings. Issues remain in regard to 911 access, but that apparently did not deter customers signing on in 2006, report authors found.
Customers accessing VoIP via their cable provider jumped 167 percent in 2006 from 3.9 million subscribers to 6.3 million, the report said. The Yankee Group expects that number to reach 26.2 million by 2011.
Many cable users, however, are not aware that their phone service is basd on VOIP, not the traditional copper phone wiring. In a separate 2006 survey, the Yankee Group found that only 9.5 percent of cable telephony subscribers knew what powered their phone service.
Comcast recently emerged as the telephony leader when it reported 2.4 million subscribers during the first quarter of 2007, an 813 percent increase. Those numbers bested previous champ Vonage, a broadband VoIP provider, which struggled last year after a weak IPO and patent battles with Verizon, the report said.
Despite those issues, however, Vonage still managed to add 1.2 million lines in 2006, a 75 percent subscriber increase. The company also added 166,000 lines during the first quarter of 2007.
Maintaining that growth comes with a price – about $300 to attract every new subscriber, the report said. The hefty cost of acquiring new customers likely contributed to the downfall of another broadband VoIP provider, SunRocket, the Yankee Group suggested.
SunRocket suddenly closed up shop earlier this month without notifying its more than 200,000 customers. It too saw growth in 2006, but the cost of marketing its service coupled with the lack of additional financial backing ultimately crippled SunRocket, the report said.
Nonetheless, the Yankee Group predicts that broadband VoIP will grow from 2.8 million customers in 2006 to 6.4 million in 2011. The growth will likely be led by innovative technologies and decreased pricing, the report said.
Going forward, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) VoIP could be a major threat, the report said. This segment of the market is "almost negligible when compared with the overall consumer VoIP market" but it could explode in the coming years given ongoing fiber projects like Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's U-verse, it said.
FTTH VoIP could see its one millionth customer by the end of 2009 and 5.1 million customers by 2011, according to Yankee Group.
Other VoIP providers to see growth last year included cable providers Time Warner, which jumped to 1.86 million customers with the addition of 760,000 new subscribers in 2006, and Cablevision, which ended the year with 1.2 million VoIP customers, or approximately 26 percent of the homes in its footprint, the report said.
To succeed in the future, the Yankee Group suggests that broadband providers bundle their services, educate the public and protect their businesses through solid investment. On the cable front, providers need to differentiate through cross-functionality of services – like mobile phones – and make sure "their ducks are in a row" in regard to patent litigation, the report recommended. FTTH, meanwhile, could get ahead with a guaranteed quality of service, Yankee predicted.
Copyright (c) 2007 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ARTICLE DATE: 07.30.07
By Chloe Albanesius
Powered by cable telephony and bundled services, the market for Voice-over-the-Internet Protocol (VoIP) services grew by leaps and bounds in 2006, though some cable customers are unaware exactly how their service works, according to a Monday report from the Yankee Group.
ADVERTISEMENT Though initially plagued by quality concerns, VOIP technology has improved enough in recent years that major cable companies are bundling the service with their cable and Internet offerings. Issues remain in regard to 911 access, but that apparently did not deter customers signing on in 2006, report authors found.
Customers accessing VoIP via their cable provider jumped 167 percent in 2006 from 3.9 million subscribers to 6.3 million, the report said. The Yankee Group expects that number to reach 26.2 million by 2011.
Many cable users, however, are not aware that their phone service is basd on VOIP, not the traditional copper phone wiring. In a separate 2006 survey, the Yankee Group found that only 9.5 percent of cable telephony subscribers knew what powered their phone service.
Comcast recently emerged as the telephony leader when it reported 2.4 million subscribers during the first quarter of 2007, an 813 percent increase. Those numbers bested previous champ Vonage, a broadband VoIP provider, which struggled last year after a weak IPO and patent battles with Verizon, the report said.
Despite those issues, however, Vonage still managed to add 1.2 million lines in 2006, a 75 percent subscriber increase. The company also added 166,000 lines during the first quarter of 2007.
Maintaining that growth comes with a price – about $300 to attract every new subscriber, the report said. The hefty cost of acquiring new customers likely contributed to the downfall of another broadband VoIP provider, SunRocket, the Yankee Group suggested.
SunRocket suddenly closed up shop earlier this month without notifying its more than 200,000 customers. It too saw growth in 2006, but the cost of marketing its service coupled with the lack of additional financial backing ultimately crippled SunRocket, the report said.
Nonetheless, the Yankee Group predicts that broadband VoIP will grow from 2.8 million customers in 2006 to 6.4 million in 2011. The growth will likely be led by innovative technologies and decreased pricing, the report said.
Going forward, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) VoIP could be a major threat, the report said. This segment of the market is "almost negligible when compared with the overall consumer VoIP market" but it could explode in the coming years given ongoing fiber projects like Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's U-verse, it said.
FTTH VoIP could see its one millionth customer by the end of 2009 and 5.1 million customers by 2011, according to Yankee Group.
Other VoIP providers to see growth last year included cable providers Time Warner, which jumped to 1.86 million customers with the addition of 760,000 new subscribers in 2006, and Cablevision, which ended the year with 1.2 million VoIP customers, or approximately 26 percent of the homes in its footprint, the report said.
To succeed in the future, the Yankee Group suggests that broadband providers bundle their services, educate the public and protect their businesses through solid investment. On the cable front, providers need to differentiate through cross-functionality of services – like mobile phones – and make sure "their ducks are in a row" in regard to patent litigation, the report recommended. FTTH, meanwhile, could get ahead with a guaranteed quality of service, Yankee predicted.
Copyright (c) 2007 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
VoIP by the Numbers
VoIP by the Numbers
- Subscribers, Revenues, Top Service Providers, Blogs and more...
Voice over IP (VoIP) has the potential to dramatically change the telecommunications landscape. Market forecasts exponential growth in VoIP within the next four years. Here are a compendium of revealing stats and trends on this transformational technology, based on leading research reports.
Market Size Forecasts: Researchers estimate residential VoIP customers to be any where between 12 million to 44 million in the US by 2010. Here are some of the size estimates:
U.S. VoIP Quick Stats
Residential Subscribers, 2006 9.6M
Residential Subscribers, 2010 44.0M
Vonage Subscribers, Q2'06 1.8M
Revenues, 2005 $1.1B
Mobile VoIP Revenues, 2012 $18.6B
Fixed VoIP Revenues, 2012 $11.9B
SMB Spend, 2005 $2.1B
SMB Spend, 2010 $8.9B
Spend on Equipment, 2008 $5.8B
Subs Growth per Month 100k
The number of residential VoIP customers (not including PC-to-PC services) more than tripled to 4.2 million in 2005 and is expected to grow by a compound annual rate of 43.9% through 2009, reaching 18.0 million. This was on the heels of an eightfold increase from 150,000 at the end of 2003 to 1.2 million at the end of 2004, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). The U.S. broadband market is expected to grow to 69.2 million by 2009, a 13.8% compound annual increase.
The number of subscribers to retail voice over IP (VoIP) services rose by 83% during 2005, from 10.3 million at the beginning of 2005 to over 18.7 million subscribers worldwide by the end of the year, according to Point Topic report.
IDC predicts that residential U.S. VoIP subscribers will grow from 10.3 million in 2006 to 44 million in 2010. The latest IDC forecast shows that VoIP will be used in 62% of broadband households in 2010.
eMarketer forecasts that by 2010, 32.6 million US households will subscribe to a VoIP service, up from 9.6 million at the end of 2006, equating to nearly 40% of all broadband households.
Telegeography pegged total US VoIP subscribers at 6.9 million in Q2 2006. Vonage leads the providers with 1.8 million subscribers as of the middle of 2006, while Time Warner Cable follows closely behind with 1.6 million subscribers.
Enterprise VoIP adoption in North America will more than double in 2010, according to a Infonetics Research survey. Almost half of small and two-thirds of large organizations in North America will be using VoIP products and services by 2010.
36% of large, 23% of medium, and 14% of small North American organizations interviewed were already using VoIP products and services in 2005
VoIP adoption will triple by 2010 among small organizations in North America
Revenue & Investment Estimates:
Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) estimates that VoIP revenue increased from $25 million in 2003 to $200 million in 2004 and $1.1 billion in 2005. Revenue is projected to increase 46.7% on a compound annual rate through 2009 reaching $5.1 billion.
Analysis from Frost & Sullivan North American Residential VoIP Services Markets reveals that revenues in this industry totaled $1.22 billion in 2005 and estimate to reach $13.2 billion in 2012.
Research firm Analysys projects that by 2012, Mobile VoIP services are forecast to generate revenues of $18.6 billion in the USA and $7.3 billion in Western Europe, compared with fixed VoIP revenues of $11.9 in the USA and $6.9 billion in Western Europe. The report says by 2015, mobile VoIP will carry 28% of all fixed and mobile voice minutes in the USA and 23% in Western Europe.
In 2005, small and medium-size companies spent $2.1 billion on Internet phone systems, equipment and services, compared with $4 billion for large businesses. By 2010, small-business spending should more than quadruple to $8.9 billion, according to market-research firm InfoTech.
U.S. RBOCs have been losing 150,000 subscriber lines per month so far this year, according to Telegeography. At the same time, Voice over IP (VoIP) service providers are adding about 100,000 subscribers per month. The balance of local service subscription losses — about 50,000 — are moving to wireless-only plans or canceling their secondary household lines.
TeleGeography predicts that VoIP service providers will capture 22% of all local exchange carriers’ existing customers, contributing to a cumulative loss of $18.2 billion in local service revenues between 2006 and 2010. Subscriber migration to VoIP also translates to $13.9 billion in lost long-distance revenues over the course of the next five years.
TeleGeography’s research indicates that of the current 5.4 million VoIP U.S. households, about 2.8 million have defected to cable MSOs’ VoIP services and have cancelled their local phone lines altogether.
By year-end 2005, Verizon had lost more than 8% of its residential phone subscribers.
Infonetics Research expects worldwide spending by service providers on next generation VoIP equipment to grow to $5.8 billion by 2008, from the estimated $1.73 billions in 2004. IP phone shipments grew strongly in 2Q06, up 17% to 2.1 million, and strong growth is forecast through 2009 as VoIP deployments extend beyond the network core to the desktop.
VoIP service revenue roughly doubled in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific from 2004 to 2005. Infonetics Research estimates that a combined $120 billion will be spent on VoIP services between 2005 and 2009 in the 3 regions. Other highlights include:
Between 2005 and 2009, VoIP service revenue will grow from:
$2.6 billion to $13.3 billion in North America
$2.3 billion to $12.7 billion in Europe
$4.2 billion to $12.9 billion in Asia Pacific
Percent of VoIP service revenue coming from residential vs. business customers:
51% in North America
72% in Europe
83% in Asia Pacific
IDC forecasts the worldwide VoIP semiconductor market to grow over $2.4 billion in 2009, with a compound annual growth rate of 38.9% for 2004-2009.
Service Providers Landscape:
Households subscribing to pure-play subscription VoIP services, who are either replacing or complementing existing traditional landline services, increased from 2.2 million in Q1 2006 to 2.9 million in Q2 2006, according to Telephia. (Telephia estimates exclude cable companies who offer “digital phone” services and free or pay-per-call VoIP services like Skype):
Vonage continues to own the largest market share of pure-play subscription VoIP consumers with a 53.9% share.
Verizon VoiceWing and AT&T CallVantage were tied for second place, each securing a 5.5% share. SunRocket followed with a 4% percent share, while Lingo claimed a 2.6% share. NetZero Voice rounded out the top five with a 2.5% share.
The number of worldwide total VoIP subscribers (residential and enterprise) is expected to almost double 2005 to 2006, when it will top 47 million, according to Infonetics Research:
Vonage leads in North American residential/SOHO VoIP subscriber market share, but is down from 34% in 2004 to 27% in 2005, resulting from fierce competition from cable MSOs, traditional telcos, and low-cost new entrants
Cable companies continue pushing to increase VoIP subscriber share: Cablevision and Time Warner Cable each have double-digit share and combined have 39% of all North American residential VoIP subscribers
AT&T, Comcast, and Cox are the only other providers with North American VoIP subscriber share greater than 3%
- Subscribers, Revenues, Top Service Providers, Blogs and more...
Voice over IP (VoIP) has the potential to dramatically change the telecommunications landscape. Market forecasts exponential growth in VoIP within the next four years. Here are a compendium of revealing stats and trends on this transformational technology, based on leading research reports.
Market Size Forecasts: Researchers estimate residential VoIP customers to be any where between 12 million to 44 million in the US by 2010. Here are some of the size estimates:
U.S. VoIP Quick Stats
Residential Subscribers, 2006 9.6M
Residential Subscribers, 2010 44.0M
Vonage Subscribers, Q2'06 1.8M
Revenues, 2005 $1.1B
Mobile VoIP Revenues, 2012 $18.6B
Fixed VoIP Revenues, 2012 $11.9B
SMB Spend, 2005 $2.1B
SMB Spend, 2010 $8.9B
Spend on Equipment, 2008 $5.8B
Subs Growth per Month 100k
The number of residential VoIP customers (not including PC-to-PC services) more than tripled to 4.2 million in 2005 and is expected to grow by a compound annual rate of 43.9% through 2009, reaching 18.0 million. This was on the heels of an eightfold increase from 150,000 at the end of 2003 to 1.2 million at the end of 2004, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). The U.S. broadband market is expected to grow to 69.2 million by 2009, a 13.8% compound annual increase.
The number of subscribers to retail voice over IP (VoIP) services rose by 83% during 2005, from 10.3 million at the beginning of 2005 to over 18.7 million subscribers worldwide by the end of the year, according to Point Topic report.
IDC predicts that residential U.S. VoIP subscribers will grow from 10.3 million in 2006 to 44 million in 2010. The latest IDC forecast shows that VoIP will be used in 62% of broadband households in 2010.
eMarketer forecasts that by 2010, 32.6 million US households will subscribe to a VoIP service, up from 9.6 million at the end of 2006, equating to nearly 40% of all broadband households.
Telegeography pegged total US VoIP subscribers at 6.9 million in Q2 2006. Vonage leads the providers with 1.8 million subscribers as of the middle of 2006, while Time Warner Cable follows closely behind with 1.6 million subscribers.
Enterprise VoIP adoption in North America will more than double in 2010, according to a Infonetics Research survey. Almost half of small and two-thirds of large organizations in North America will be using VoIP products and services by 2010.
36% of large, 23% of medium, and 14% of small North American organizations interviewed were already using VoIP products and services in 2005
VoIP adoption will triple by 2010 among small organizations in North America
Revenue & Investment Estimates:
Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) estimates that VoIP revenue increased from $25 million in 2003 to $200 million in 2004 and $1.1 billion in 2005. Revenue is projected to increase 46.7% on a compound annual rate through 2009 reaching $5.1 billion.
Analysis from Frost & Sullivan North American Residential VoIP Services Markets reveals that revenues in this industry totaled $1.22 billion in 2005 and estimate to reach $13.2 billion in 2012.
Research firm Analysys projects that by 2012, Mobile VoIP services are forecast to generate revenues of $18.6 billion in the USA and $7.3 billion in Western Europe, compared with fixed VoIP revenues of $11.9 in the USA and $6.9 billion in Western Europe. The report says by 2015, mobile VoIP will carry 28% of all fixed and mobile voice minutes in the USA and 23% in Western Europe.
In 2005, small and medium-size companies spent $2.1 billion on Internet phone systems, equipment and services, compared with $4 billion for large businesses. By 2010, small-business spending should more than quadruple to $8.9 billion, according to market-research firm InfoTech.
U.S. RBOCs have been losing 150,000 subscriber lines per month so far this year, according to Telegeography. At the same time, Voice over IP (VoIP) service providers are adding about 100,000 subscribers per month. The balance of local service subscription losses — about 50,000 — are moving to wireless-only plans or canceling their secondary household lines.
TeleGeography predicts that VoIP service providers will capture 22% of all local exchange carriers’ existing customers, contributing to a cumulative loss of $18.2 billion in local service revenues between 2006 and 2010. Subscriber migration to VoIP also translates to $13.9 billion in lost long-distance revenues over the course of the next five years.
TeleGeography’s research indicates that of the current 5.4 million VoIP U.S. households, about 2.8 million have defected to cable MSOs’ VoIP services and have cancelled their local phone lines altogether.
By year-end 2005, Verizon had lost more than 8% of its residential phone subscribers.
Infonetics Research expects worldwide spending by service providers on next generation VoIP equipment to grow to $5.8 billion by 2008, from the estimated $1.73 billions in 2004. IP phone shipments grew strongly in 2Q06, up 17% to 2.1 million, and strong growth is forecast through 2009 as VoIP deployments extend beyond the network core to the desktop.
VoIP service revenue roughly doubled in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific from 2004 to 2005. Infonetics Research estimates that a combined $120 billion will be spent on VoIP services between 2005 and 2009 in the 3 regions. Other highlights include:
Between 2005 and 2009, VoIP service revenue will grow from:
$2.6 billion to $13.3 billion in North America
$2.3 billion to $12.7 billion in Europe
$4.2 billion to $12.9 billion in Asia Pacific
Percent of VoIP service revenue coming from residential vs. business customers:
51% in North America
72% in Europe
83% in Asia Pacific
IDC forecasts the worldwide VoIP semiconductor market to grow over $2.4 billion in 2009, with a compound annual growth rate of 38.9% for 2004-2009.
Service Providers Landscape:
Households subscribing to pure-play subscription VoIP services, who are either replacing or complementing existing traditional landline services, increased from 2.2 million in Q1 2006 to 2.9 million in Q2 2006, according to Telephia. (Telephia estimates exclude cable companies who offer “digital phone” services and free or pay-per-call VoIP services like Skype):
Vonage continues to own the largest market share of pure-play subscription VoIP consumers with a 53.9% share.
Verizon VoiceWing and AT&T CallVantage were tied for second place, each securing a 5.5% share. SunRocket followed with a 4% percent share, while Lingo claimed a 2.6% share. NetZero Voice rounded out the top five with a 2.5% share.
The number of worldwide total VoIP subscribers (residential and enterprise) is expected to almost double 2005 to 2006, when it will top 47 million, according to Infonetics Research:
Vonage leads in North American residential/SOHO VoIP subscriber market share, but is down from 34% in 2004 to 27% in 2005, resulting from fierce competition from cable MSOs, traditional telcos, and low-cost new entrants
Cable companies continue pushing to increase VoIP subscriber share: Cablevision and Time Warner Cable each have double-digit share and combined have 39% of all North American residential VoIP subscribers
AT&T, Comcast, and Cox are the only other providers with North American VoIP subscriber share greater than 3%
US Lags in Global VoIP Market
US Lags in Global VoIP Market
The market for consumer VoIP services boomed in 2006, with Europe leading the way, reports In-Stat. Total VoIP subscribers worldwide increased by 34 million subscribers in 2006, the high-tech market research firm says.
“Europe showed the largest gain in consumer VoIP subscribers,” says Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. “The European consumer VoIP market increased by over 14 million subscribers last year. The European VoIP market is being aided by local loop unbundling, the introduction of cable telephony and triple-play service bundles, as well as operator consolidation. In contrast, US wireline operators added only 4 million VoIP subscribers in 2006. No one seems interested in selling anything other than plain-old-telephone-service”.
Recent research by In-Stat found the following:
The countries with the largest VoIP subscriber gains in 2006 include France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
In 2011, the US will represent only 18% of the global consumer VoIP market.
By 2011, In-Stat predicts the consumer VoIP market will total nearly $44 billion worldwide.
The research, “Europe Leads the Booming Consumer VoIP Market”, covers the worldwide market for Voice over Internet Protocol. It provides forecasts for global VoIP subscribers, segmented by region, through 2011. It also includes analysis of major VoIP markets around the world. Analysis of market drivers and challenges is provided.
The market for consumer VoIP services boomed in 2006, with Europe leading the way, reports In-Stat. Total VoIP subscribers worldwide increased by 34 million subscribers in 2006, the high-tech market research firm says.
“Europe showed the largest gain in consumer VoIP subscribers,” says Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. “The European consumer VoIP market increased by over 14 million subscribers last year. The European VoIP market is being aided by local loop unbundling, the introduction of cable telephony and triple-play service bundles, as well as operator consolidation. In contrast, US wireline operators added only 4 million VoIP subscribers in 2006. No one seems interested in selling anything other than plain-old-telephone-service”.
Recent research by In-Stat found the following:
The countries with the largest VoIP subscriber gains in 2006 include France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
In 2011, the US will represent only 18% of the global consumer VoIP market.
By 2011, In-Stat predicts the consumer VoIP market will total nearly $44 billion worldwide.
The research, “Europe Leads the Booming Consumer VoIP Market”, covers the worldwide market for Voice over Internet Protocol. It provides forecasts for global VoIP subscribers, segmented by region, through 2011. It also includes analysis of major VoIP markets around the world. Analysis of market drivers and challenges is provided.
VoIP subscriber growth in western Europe is skyrocketing
VoIP subscriber growth in western Europe is skyrocketing
TeleGeography’s new European VoIP Research Service projects that nearly 30 million consumer VoIP lines will be in service across Europe by end of 2007, up from 6.5 million at the beginning of 2006. The rapid growth of VoIP will change the way telcos do business in Europe, and challenges the historical stronghold of incumbent service providers.
However, while VoIP services are growing rapidly in all of western Europe, a closer look reveals stark differences in subscriber numbers, market penetration and growth rates across Europe (see figure). Some markets, like France and the Netherlands, have already reached a large portion of homes; others, like Spain, have low penetration levels, but are growing at a blistering pace.
TeleGeography’s European VoIP Research Service provides vital insight and data including:
Which countries are the largest markets for VoIP services, and which have the greatest long-term potential?
Who are the largest European VoIP service providers?
What impact will VoIP Have on switched telephone revenues?
How do trends in Europe compare with the US?
Source: TeleGeography’s European VoIP Research Servic
TeleGeography’s new European VoIP Research Service projects that nearly 30 million consumer VoIP lines will be in service across Europe by end of 2007, up from 6.5 million at the beginning of 2006. The rapid growth of VoIP will change the way telcos do business in Europe, and challenges the historical stronghold of incumbent service providers.
However, while VoIP services are growing rapidly in all of western Europe, a closer look reveals stark differences in subscriber numbers, market penetration and growth rates across Europe (see figure). Some markets, like France and the Netherlands, have already reached a large portion of homes; others, like Spain, have low penetration levels, but are growing at a blistering pace.
TeleGeography’s European VoIP Research Service provides vital insight and data including:
Which countries are the largest markets for VoIP services, and which have the greatest long-term potential?
Who are the largest European VoIP service providers?
What impact will VoIP Have on switched telephone revenues?
How do trends in Europe compare with the US?
Source: TeleGeography’s European VoIP Research Servic
Vonage slips to Comcast in VoIP subscribers
Vonage slips to Comcast in VoIP subscribers
By Peter Svensson, Associated Press
NEW YORK — Internet telephone company Vonage reported a much reduced loss for the second quarter Tuesday as it scaled back marketing, but it also saw a drastic drop in new subscribers.
The drop in recruitment means that Vonage is no longer the country's largest provider of Internet-based telephone service, a field it pioneered. Cable company Comcast reported 3 million digital phone subscribers at the end of the second quarter, surpassing Vonage's 2.45 million, an increase of just 57,000 lines from the first quarter.
The Holmdel, N.J., company is struggling in court with another old-line telecommunications company, Verizon Communications. In March, a jury found that Vonage infringed on three Verizon patents. The judge barred Vonage from signing up new customers, but that decision has been stayed while an appeals court considers it. In the mean time, Vonage is trying to work around the patented technologies.
Vonage posted a net loss of $34 million, or 22 cents per share, for the April-June period, down from $74 million, or $1.16 per share, in the same period last year.
Excluding one-time charges, Vonage lost $18 million, or 12 cents a share, substantially better than the average analyst estimate compiled by Thomson Financial at 34 cents a share. Analyst estimates generally exclude charges.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Verizon Communications | Comcast | VOIP | VONAGE
Revenue came to $206 million, $2 million short of analyst expectations but up 43% from $144 million in the second quarter of 2006.
Vonage, which once blanketed the Internet with its banner ads, spent $68 million on marketing in the second quarter, down from $91 million in the first quarter. However, it got less for its money: the market costing per added subscriber rose by $14 to $287.
Vonage's interim chief executive, Jeffrey Citron, said a more focused marketing effort has reduced the cost to about $250 per subscriber in June and July, and the company expects that cost level to be sustained through the third quarter.
Rather than focusing on building the Vonage brand, Citron said, the company is now directing its money to where it's most likely to recruit subscribers. For instance, its Web ads are now only showing up on the "highest-performing" sites.
Citron also said he expects subscriber additions to rise in the third quarter as new marketing initiatives take hold.
"I believe we're turning the corner on one of the most difficult periods of Vonage's history," he said.
The business of selling Voice over Internet Protocol service, or VoIP, independently of cable and phone companies has looked increasingly shaky in recent months. Vonage's legal troubles have no doubt scared off some potential subscribers. In July, rival SunRocket abruptly shut down, stranding more than 200,000 subscribers.
On June 30, Vonage had cash reserves of $344 million, down from $410 million three months earlier. Of the total, $66 million were tied up as collateral for a bond tied to the Verizon patent verdict. The company said it expected its "cash burn" to decline in the third quarter.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Peter Svensson, Associated Press
NEW YORK — Internet telephone company Vonage reported a much reduced loss for the second quarter Tuesday as it scaled back marketing, but it also saw a drastic drop in new subscribers.
The drop in recruitment means that Vonage is no longer the country's largest provider of Internet-based telephone service, a field it pioneered. Cable company Comcast reported 3 million digital phone subscribers at the end of the second quarter, surpassing Vonage's 2.45 million, an increase of just 57,000 lines from the first quarter.
The Holmdel, N.J., company is struggling in court with another old-line telecommunications company, Verizon Communications. In March, a jury found that Vonage infringed on three Verizon patents. The judge barred Vonage from signing up new customers, but that decision has been stayed while an appeals court considers it. In the mean time, Vonage is trying to work around the patented technologies.
Vonage posted a net loss of $34 million, or 22 cents per share, for the April-June period, down from $74 million, or $1.16 per share, in the same period last year.
Excluding one-time charges, Vonage lost $18 million, or 12 cents a share, substantially better than the average analyst estimate compiled by Thomson Financial at 34 cents a share. Analyst estimates generally exclude charges.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Verizon Communications | Comcast | VOIP | VONAGE
Revenue came to $206 million, $2 million short of analyst expectations but up 43% from $144 million in the second quarter of 2006.
Vonage, which once blanketed the Internet with its banner ads, spent $68 million on marketing in the second quarter, down from $91 million in the first quarter. However, it got less for its money: the market costing per added subscriber rose by $14 to $287.
Vonage's interim chief executive, Jeffrey Citron, said a more focused marketing effort has reduced the cost to about $250 per subscriber in June and July, and the company expects that cost level to be sustained through the third quarter.
Rather than focusing on building the Vonage brand, Citron said, the company is now directing its money to where it's most likely to recruit subscribers. For instance, its Web ads are now only showing up on the "highest-performing" sites.
Citron also said he expects subscriber additions to rise in the third quarter as new marketing initiatives take hold.
"I believe we're turning the corner on one of the most difficult periods of Vonage's history," he said.
The business of selling Voice over Internet Protocol service, or VoIP, independently of cable and phone companies has looked increasingly shaky in recent months. Vonage's legal troubles have no doubt scared off some potential subscribers. In July, rival SunRocket abruptly shut down, stranding more than 200,000 subscribers.
On June 30, Vonage had cash reserves of $344 million, down from $410 million three months earlier. Of the total, $66 million were tied up as collateral for a bond tied to the Verizon patent verdict. The company said it expected its "cash burn" to decline in the third quarter.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
VoIP service revenue hits $15.8B in 2006 boom expected to continue
VoIP service revenue hits $15.8B in 2006 boom expected to continue
CAMPBELL, California, August 8, 2007—Worldwide VoIP service revenue jumped 66% to $15.8 billion in 2006 after more than doubling in 2005, and is expected to more than triple by 2010, says Infonetics Research in its new VoIP Services and Subscribers report.
Hosted VoIP services continue to outpace managed IP PBX services by far, with residential services fueling the market, but the business segment is also growing, and will continue to, the report says.
“Asia Pacific has been leading the VoIP services scene for a couple of years, with Japan’s SoftBank pioneering the service and taking a strong lead, but the EMEA and North America regions have gained some ground at the expense of Asia in the last two years. The Latin American-Caribbean region is also posting impressive growth and gaining share,” said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics Research and lead author of the report.
Other highlights from the report:
Worldwide revenue from residential hosted VoIP services jumped 68% between 2005 and 2006; managed IP PBX service revenue grew 45%
The number of worldwide residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers nearly doubled between 2005 and 2006, to 46.5 million, 46% of which are in Asia Pacific
71% of worldwide VoIP service revenue came from residential/SOHO customers in 2006, 29% from business customers; revenue from both residential and business customers will increase steadily at least through 2010
SoftBank is the world's largest VoIP service provider with 18% subscriber market share, followed (in order) by NTT, Vonage, France Télécom, and Time Warner Cable
Infonetics' report tracks residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers, managed IP PBX services, and hosted VoIP services split by residential/SOHO vs. business (with trunking/VoIP VPN vs. IP Centrex/hosted IP breakouts) in North America, EMEA, Asia Pacific, Latin America-Caribbean, and worldwide. The North American revenue forecast includes US and Canada breakouts.
The report includes regional subscriber market share, tracking Cableco, Comcast, Digilinea, France Télécom, Free, ONO, NTT, PCCW, SoftBank, Time Warner, Vonage, Vono, and others.
Download report highlights at www.info.infonetics.com. For sales, contact Larry Howard, vice president, at larry@infonetics.com or +1 (408) 583-3335.
Infonetics Research (www.infonetics.com) is an international market research and consulting firm specializing in data networking and telecom. Services include quarterly market share and forecasting, end-user and service provider survey research, and service provider capex analysis.
美VoIP第4大業者SunRocket公司關閉 VoIP業者發展之路蒙陰影
美VoIP第4大業者SunRocket公司關閉 VoIP業者發展之路蒙陰影
(寄信給作者) 2007/08/03
詹子嫻／台北
日前華盛頓郵報（The Washington Post）報導網路電話業者SunRocket突然關閉，預計超過20萬用戶被迫停話，不少SunRocket用戶採預付制，1年199美元的電話費不知道能否拿回來。從網路電話服務供應商（Internet Telephony Service Provider；ITSP）的角度來看，應不樂見此事發生，不僅為網路電話的前景蒙上陰影，更凸顯了ITSP的經營困境。
在台灣多數人可能對SunRocket感到陌生，不過，由於SunRocket費率便宜，費率設計新穎，像是瞄準亞裔市場推出撥打大陸等亞洲國家電話，每分鐘只要1分錢（penny per minute）的方案，成立3年吸引不少客戶，居全美網路電話市佔率第4名，前3名依序為Vonage、Verizon及AT&T。
ITSP發展之路究竟面臨哪些問題，第1、市場競爭激烈：VoIP市場競爭激烈已久，ITSP除面對同業、新興業者如Jajah、Rebtel之外，還得應付在旁環伺的傳統電話公司與有線電視多系統經營業者（Multi System Operator；MSO），為了搶奪市佔，只好流血砍價。第2、純語音服務不夠看：相較於網路服務供應商（ISP）或MSO能提供線路、語音、視訊3合1（Triple Play）綑綁服務（bundle service），純語音功能自然失去競爭力。
因此不論是Vonage用戶數下降，或SunRocket客戶成長率停滯、縮編人力等，在在證實VoIP成為不折不扣的「紅海」，想要從中賺進大把銀子更是難上加難，有鑑於此，VoIP業者紛紛從其他服務制賺取營收，例如加值服務及廣告。
觀察台灣VoIP市場亦有類似狀況，經營VoIP的二類電信業者眾多、競爭大，加上E.164-based的070電話發展屢受阻礙，初期同樣得以低廉費率吸引大眾轉換，VoIP市場確實不易經營。
當Skype全球發燒後，網路電話以「重新振作」之姿，再度返回市場，但隨著VoIP業者獲利不佳、甚至關閉等消息不斷，VoIP還是隻金雞母嗎、或是如何讓VoIP成為搖錢樹？答案有待業者思考！
(寄信給作者) 2007/08/03
詹子嫻／台北
日前華盛頓郵報（The Washington Post）報導網路電話業者SunRocket突然關閉，預計超過20萬用戶被迫停話，不少SunRocket用戶採預付制，1年199美元的電話費不知道能否拿回來。從網路電話服務供應商（Internet Telephony Service Provider；ITSP）的角度來看，應不樂見此事發生，不僅為網路電話的前景蒙上陰影，更凸顯了ITSP的經營困境。
在台灣多數人可能對SunRocket感到陌生，不過，由於SunRocket費率便宜，費率設計新穎，像是瞄準亞裔市場推出撥打大陸等亞洲國家電話，每分鐘只要1分錢（penny per minute）的方案，成立3年吸引不少客戶，居全美網路電話市佔率第4名，前3名依序為Vonage、Verizon及AT&T。
ITSP發展之路究竟面臨哪些問題，第1、市場競爭激烈：VoIP市場競爭激烈已久，ITSP除面對同業、新興業者如Jajah、Rebtel之外，還得應付在旁環伺的傳統電話公司與有線電視多系統經營業者（Multi System Operator；MSO），為了搶奪市佔，只好流血砍價。第2、純語音服務不夠看：相較於網路服務供應商（ISP）或MSO能提供線路、語音、視訊3合1（Triple Play）綑綁服務（bundle service），純語音功能自然失去競爭力。
因此不論是Vonage用戶數下降，或SunRocket客戶成長率停滯、縮編人力等，在在證實VoIP成為不折不扣的「紅海」，想要從中賺進大把銀子更是難上加難，有鑑於此，VoIP業者紛紛從其他服務制賺取營收，例如加值服務及廣告。
觀察台灣VoIP市場亦有類似狀況，經營VoIP的二類電信業者眾多、競爭大，加上E.164-based的070電話發展屢受阻礙，初期同樣得以低廉費率吸引大眾轉換，VoIP市場確實不易經營。
當Skype全球發燒後，網路電話以「重新振作」之姿，再度返回市場，但隨著VoIP業者獲利不佳、甚至關閉等消息不斷，VoIP還是隻金雞母嗎、或是如何讓VoIP成為搖錢樹？答案有待業者思考！
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
U.S. makes VoIP strides, but Europe is taking the lead
U.S. makes VoIP strides, but Europe is taking the lead
European incumbents, competitors drive new growth
by Sean Buckley
Mon, September 10. 2007
Despite some slowdowns with the closing of competitive VoIP providers such as Sunrocket (ceased operations earlier this summer) and the troubles of Vonage, the U.S. residential VoIP market continues to be a vibrant sector of growth.
While it’s true that the troubles of competitive VoIP providers have slowed down the growth of US VoIP, the cable operator’s voice drive has leveled out that trend.
According to Telegeography’s US VoIP Research Service, the number of U.S. consumers rose from 6.5 million in mid-2006 to 11.8 million by Q2 2007. (See Figure 1.)
By 2011, TeleGeography predicts that the number of U.S. VoIP subscribers will climb to 23.3 million, a factor that will driven mainly by the cable operator’s aggressive deployment of IP telephony services. Evidence of the growth in cable telephony is being seen not only on the retail side, but also the wholesale market side. Level 3, for example, which sells both traditional fiber connections and VoIP services to cable operators, is seeing this first hand.
“Cable today is the fastest growing wholesale segment that we serve,” said Sureel Choksi, President, Wholesale Markets for Level 3. “That growth is driven by growing backbone data requirements to support high- speed Internet and video and also driven by growth in VoIP and traditional voice.”
Europe takes charge
Despite the vibrant VoIP market that exists in the U.S., it pales in comparison to the growth that’s being seen in the European market. In recent years, the Europe and U.S. markets were seeing similar growth patterns, but then in 2006 the two markets began to splinter apart. There are many factors that are contributing to Europe’s lead over the U.S. in the VoIP race.
In addition to stronger activity from incumbent service providers (France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and BT), open access to incumbent local loops, aggressive competition and pricing have lead to Europe’s aggressive VoIP growth.
What’s more, TeleGeography says that while European incumbent providers account for 26 percent of VoIP subscribers, U.S. incumbent carriers (AT&T, Verizon and Qwest) have not made as big of a push into the residential VoIP market.
TeleGeography predicts if these above trends continue by 2011, European VoIP penetration will be twice what it will be in the U.S.
“VoIP service in the U.S. has emerged as a mainstream service that is causing traditional services providers some headaches,” Stephan Beckert, TeleGeogrpahy analyst, said. “However, in Europe, VoIP could fundamentally change the structure of the fixed-line market.”
Bridging TDM-to-IP
Those headaches that Beckert and other analysts are referring will likely be abated by new platforms from Tekelec that effectively enable a serviced provider to offer new multimedia services now, but provide a path for service providers to migrate to an IMS architecture on their own terms.
As service providers migrate to an IP and ultimately an IMS-based network architecture, there will be an ongoing need to support services in the legacy and IP and IMS domain.
Tekelec’s TekCore SIP Signaling Router (SSR), for one, allows a service provider to provide unified signaling over the TDM, 2G/3G, and ultimately the IMS network.
By implementing a unified core signaling in their next-gen network, the SSR can enable service providers to use their softswitches to better support session management for multimedia SIP endpoints. (see: Tekelec bridges the TDM-to-IP divide)
These platforms address what Venture Development Corporation says are responses to the reality of the fact that there will be hybrid TDM/IP networks will exist for years to come.
“Whole network change-outs of TDM to IP are likely to be the exception—not the rule,” says the VDC study.
European incumbents, competitors drive new growth
by Sean Buckley
Mon, September 10. 2007
Despite some slowdowns with the closing of competitive VoIP providers such as Sunrocket (ceased operations earlier this summer) and the troubles of Vonage, the U.S. residential VoIP market continues to be a vibrant sector of growth.
While it’s true that the troubles of competitive VoIP providers have slowed down the growth of US VoIP, the cable operator’s voice drive has leveled out that trend.
According to Telegeography’s US VoIP Research Service, the number of U.S. consumers rose from 6.5 million in mid-2006 to 11.8 million by Q2 2007. (See Figure 1.)
By 2011, TeleGeography predicts that the number of U.S. VoIP subscribers will climb to 23.3 million, a factor that will driven mainly by the cable operator’s aggressive deployment of IP telephony services. Evidence of the growth in cable telephony is being seen not only on the retail side, but also the wholesale market side. Level 3, for example, which sells both traditional fiber connections and VoIP services to cable operators, is seeing this first hand.
“Cable today is the fastest growing wholesale segment that we serve,” said Sureel Choksi, President, Wholesale Markets for Level 3. “That growth is driven by growing backbone data requirements to support high- speed Internet and video and also driven by growth in VoIP and traditional voice.”
Europe takes charge
Despite the vibrant VoIP market that exists in the U.S., it pales in comparison to the growth that’s being seen in the European market. In recent years, the Europe and U.S. markets were seeing similar growth patterns, but then in 2006 the two markets began to splinter apart. There are many factors that are contributing to Europe’s lead over the U.S. in the VoIP race.
In addition to stronger activity from incumbent service providers (France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and BT), open access to incumbent local loops, aggressive competition and pricing have lead to Europe’s aggressive VoIP growth.
What’s more, TeleGeography says that while European incumbent providers account for 26 percent of VoIP subscribers, U.S. incumbent carriers (AT&T, Verizon and Qwest) have not made as big of a push into the residential VoIP market.
TeleGeography predicts if these above trends continue by 2011, European VoIP penetration will be twice what it will be in the U.S.
“VoIP service in the U.S. has emerged as a mainstream service that is causing traditional services providers some headaches,” Stephan Beckert, TeleGeogrpahy analyst, said. “However, in Europe, VoIP could fundamentally change the structure of the fixed-line market.”
Bridging TDM-to-IP
Those headaches that Beckert and other analysts are referring will likely be abated by new platforms from Tekelec that effectively enable a serviced provider to offer new multimedia services now, but provide a path for service providers to migrate to an IMS architecture on their own terms.
As service providers migrate to an IP and ultimately an IMS-based network architecture, there will be an ongoing need to support services in the legacy and IP and IMS domain.
Tekelec’s TekCore SIP Signaling Router (SSR), for one, allows a service provider to provide unified signaling over the TDM, 2G/3G, and ultimately the IMS network.
By implementing a unified core signaling in their next-gen network, the SSR can enable service providers to use their softswitches to better support session management for multimedia SIP endpoints. (see: Tekelec bridges the TDM-to-IP divide)
These platforms address what Venture Development Corporation says are responses to the reality of the fact that there will be hybrid TDM/IP networks will exist for years to come.
“Whole network change-outs of TDM to IP are likely to be the exception—not the rule,” says the VDC study.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)