What vexes VoIP users?

Mon Feb 28 19:03:01 UTC 2011

On Mon, 28 Feb 2011, Leigh Porter wrote:
> On 28 Feb 2011, at 18:37, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
>> On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:29:08 EST, Bret Clark said:
>>> On 02/28/2011 01:17 PM, Leigh Porter wrote:
>>>> VoIP at the last mile is just too niche at the moment. It's for people on this list, not my mother.
>>
>>> Baloney...if that was the case, then all these ILEC's wouldn't be
>>> whining about POT's lines decreasing exponentially year over year!
>>
>> I do believe that the ILEC's are mostly losing POTS lines to cell phones, not
>> to VoIP. I myself have a cell phone but no POTS service at my home address.  On
>> the other hand, I *am* seeing a metric ton of Vonage and Magic Jack ads on TV
>> these days - if VoIP is "too niche", how are those two making any money?

It's more cellphones than VoIP or cable provider services, but the latter 
two are still eating POTS' lunch in the US - even if you don't count 
something like FiOS where Verizon tears out your copper POTS and moves 
your line to their ONC.

> It is quite a different market here. I can get POTS services over the 
> same copper from, I'd say, about 5 different companies. Maybe more, I 
> have not counted. I guess the competition already available on the 
> copper would largely preclude anything but the cheapest VoIP service.

Sounds very different indeed.  In the US, it's basically "your local Ma 
Bell derivative, or something not-POTs."  Anecodtally, as of this morning 
we just dropped one of our POTS lines for the cable company's alternative. 
Cost dropped from $69/mo to $29/mo right there.

With say, Verizon POTS you're looking at nearly $30/mo just for dialtone, 
with everything else (outbound calls, LD, caller ID...) extra.  Now there 
is some added value in real POTS, but it's awfully hard to justify the 
cost difference.

-- 
Jameel Akari