VoIP in countries

G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

Hello all,

I am working on a competitive analysis project on Europe's top VoIP
(voice over IP) countries. My focus is on consumer software products
such as Skype, Yahoo!Messenger, AOL's AIM etc. I am very much
interested in understanding the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finish and
Russian markets. Not speaking any of the local languages, it has been a
challenge...

I have not found any local products yet, but I am sure they are there!

So, what I need are some insights on the market situation. I have a
general ISP and telecom view, but no latest VoIP trends. What are the
local most important competitors? How do they promote themselves? Any
alliances with ISPs or start-up phone companies? How do they compete
with global products such as Skype, MSN, Yahoo! etc? Why would a
national of any of those countries choose a local solution rather than,
for example, Skype or a more international SIP-based solution?

Any information is more than welcome. Please post to the group or send
to my e-mail.

Thank you all very much!

Luiz
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

Christian Barmala wrote:
> Hi Luiz,
>
> "Luiz Lima" <llima@imagelink.com.br> wrote:
>
> > So, what I need are some insights on the market situation. I have a
> > general ISP and telecom view, but no latest VoIP trends. What are the
> > local most important competitors? How do they promote themselves? Any
> > alliances with ISPs or start-up phone companies? Why would a national of
> > any of those countries choose a local solution rather than a more
> > international SIP-based solution?
>
> For many years we had a monopoly situation in Germany (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Telekom) This changed during the 90s,
> and meanwhile many companies who own long distance lines offer services to
> end users. However the "last mile" to the end user is still owned by
> Deutsche Telekom in most cases so the new providers have to pay for using
> this line. This last mile issue can be overcome if the user has a flat rate
> for Internet access anyway and uses it to do the VoIP connection to someone
> to offer VoIP to landline (POTS) connection. Many of these VoIP providers
> don't support ENUM (http://www.enum.org/, http://www.enum-center.de/) to map
> phone numbers to SIP-URIs they only support dialing shortcuts to reach
> partners. Some of them disabled pure VoIP connections outside their own
> network even if you use a SIP-URI directly. This is why I suspect that they
> aren't really interested in pure VoIP, but rather want to do POTS business
> and overcome the "last mile issue".

But exactly how can one run a business based on pure VoIP? SIP is an
essentially peer-to-peer protocol apart from the directory
functionality, and either ENUM or a free registrar like FWD may provide
the latter at no cost. The "VoIP provider" business only exists because
most VoIP calls, today, end up terminated through the PSTN or are
initiated with a PSTN call to a DID number, but as more and more people
will move away from POTS devices to VoIP devices that line of business
is going to die out (and anyway there are plenty of third-party
"terminators" in healthy competition with each other (Voxee, VoipJet,
Teliax etc.) that can pick up the leftovers). Things were different
when gateways were dumb devices controlled through MGCP and the
intelligence lived inside expensive units, but nowadays with less than
USD 100 one can buy smart ATA's and even embedded PBX's (such as the
Asterisk port to OpenWRT that runs on 80 dollar WRT54GS routers).

In summary, with intelligence moving to the edge (where it rightly
belongs, in an Internet context) the carriers are left with nothing
else to do but routing opaque IP packets. It's a commoditized business
that everybody hates, but I can see no alternative for the poor old
dinosaurs.

Enzo
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

Hi Luiz,

"Luiz Lima" <llima@imagelink.com.br> wrote:

> So, what I need are some insights on the market situation. I have a
> general ISP and telecom view, but no latest VoIP trends. What are the
> local most important competitors? How do they promote themselves? Any
> alliances with ISPs or start-up phone companies? Why would a national of
> any of those countries choose a local solution rather than a more
> international SIP-based solution?


For many years we had a monopoly situation in Germany (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Telekom) This changed during the 90s,
and meanwhile many companies who own long distance lines offer services to
end users. However the "last mile" to the end user is still owned by
Deutsche Telekom in most cases so the new providers have to pay for using
this line. This last mile issue can be overcome if the user has a flat rate
for Internet access anyway and uses it to do the VoIP connection to someone
to offer VoIP to landline (POTS) connection. Many of these VoIP providers
don't support ENUM (http://www.enum.org/, http://www.enum-center.de/) to map
phone numbers to SIP-URIs they only support dialing shortcuts to reach
partners. Some of them disabled pure VoIP connections outside their own
network even if you use a SIP-URI directly. This is why I suspect that they
aren't really interested in pure VoIP, but rather want to do POTS business
and overcome the "last mile issue".

Some internet providers sponsor VoIP-hardware if you close a 1 or 2 years
contract with them. All of them offer SIP-based solutions. The only place
where Skype is promoted are Laptops, which come preconfigured with Skype and
some free minutes.

Christian
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

Christian Barmala wrote:
> "Enzo Michelangeli" <nospam@em.no-ip.com>
> > how can one run a business based on pure VoIP?
> > The "VoIP provider" business only exists because most VoIP calls, today,
> > end up terminated through the PSTN
>
> 1995 someone predicted on a telecom conference: "In the past telephone calls
> were billed according to time and distance. In the future they will be
> billed by bandwitch, volume and latency or other quality parameters."

It has been clear for a while that flat-fee was the way to go, also
because technology has steadily reduced the actual cost of
long-distance communications long before the Internet revolution:
people like Andrew Odlyzko made this point for many years (see e.g.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_7/odlyzko/). However, for a
while the telcos carried on with the traditional model (and
traditionally high charges) because they could, thanks to their
monopoly status. First the Internet, and then VoIP, have exploded that
fiction, forcing low and flat-fee pricing also for POTS services. In
Hong Kong, where I live, a couple of telcos are presently offering
flat-fee IDD to more than 20 countries for $5 - $12 a month. Europe is
much less deregulated and competitive, so the charges there are still
comparatively high.

> POTS
> providers provide flat rates for Intra German calls and Internet providers
> offer Flat rates as well as volume tarifs. If you think in this categroy it
> does not matte if you transfer you phone call over IP or over POTS. Even the
> billing parameters converge between IP ant POTS.
>
> I compare it to the difference between oil and gas heating. You can't escape
> the oil price by using gas. It's price will increase too. However gas is
> easier to use than oil.

But gas and oil are both scarce commodities: VoIP telephony is just a
service on top of an existing resource (IP bandwidth) and its marginal
cost is close to zero. (In fact, also the marginal cost of POTS
telephony is about zero, but the POTS infrastructure doesn't serve any
other purpose, so there is little incentive for the user to pay for it
if VoIP can replace it.)

> Providers will compete with each other based on the ease of use and value
> added features they provide: Create your personal phone book in the
> Internet, click on an address and your and your partner's phone rings.
> Convert between fax and email. Check your voicemail from all over the world.

These are all services that it will be very difficult to charge for,
just as it has proved nearly impossible to charge for web or e-mail
services. There are just too many good free alternatives: right now,
just to name a few, FWD for directory and voicemail, Ipkall and Sipgate
for DID numbers, several others for both, e2 for fax-to-email
conversion... Premium services will attract some charges, but the bad
old days of monopolistic exploitation achieved through vertical
integration are gone for good, thanks to the unbundling of transport
and service layers and the global access to services allowed by the
Internet model. (Which is why mobile phone providers tried, with WAP,
to enforce "walled-garden" policies: with the relust of making of WAP a
dismal failure).

> Use a single line for phone, data, TV, and future services.

This is not a VoIP service: it's the benefit of using IP for all the
types of communication. And bringing IP bandwidth to a user will be the
only really chargeable service, which is why it is our interest as
users to try our best to prevent monopolies in this area. The real
battle between consumers and suppliers will be in the "last mile"
bringing IP connectivity to each business and residential user.

Enzo
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

Christian Barmala wrote:
> "Enzo Michelangeli" <nospam@em.no-ip.com>
> > how can one run a business based on pure VoIP?
> > The "VoIP provider" business only exists because most VoIP calls, today,
> > end up terminated through the PSTN
>
> 1995 someone predicted on a telecom conference: "In the past telephone calls
> were billed according to time and distance. In the future they will be
> billed by bandwitch, volume and latency or other quality parameters."

It has been clear for a while that flat-fee was the way to go, also
because technology has steadily reduced the actual cost of
long-distance communications long before the Internet revolution:
people like Andrew Odlyzko made this point for many years (see e.g.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_7/odlyzko/). However, for a
while the telcos carried on with the traditional model (and
traditionally high charges) because they could, thanks to their
monopoly status. First the Internet, and then VoIP, have exploded that
fiction, forcing low and flat-fee pricing also for POTS services. In
Hong Kong, where I live, a couple of telcos are presently offering
flat-fee IDD to more than 20 countries for $5 - $12 a month. Europe is
much less deregulated and competitive, so the charges there are still
comparatively high.

> POTS
> providers provide flat rates for Intra German calls and Internet providers
> offer Flat rates as well as volume tarifs. If you think in this categroy it
> does not matte if you transfer you phone call over IP or over POTS. Even the
> billing parameters converge between IP ant POTS.
>
> I compare it to the difference between oil and gas heating. You can't escape
> the oil price by using gas. It's price will increase too. However gas is
> easier to use than oil.

But gas and oil are both scarce commodities: VoIP telephony is just a
service on top of an existing resource (IP bandwidth) and its marginal
cost is close to zero. (In fact, also the marginal cost of POTS
telephony is about zero, but the POTS infrastructure doesn't serve any
other purpose, so there is little incentive for the user to pay for it
if VoIP can replace it.)

> Providers will compete with each other based on the ease of use and value
> added features they provide: Create your personal phone book in the
> Internet, click on an address and your and your partner's phone rings.
> Convert between fax and email. Check your voicemail from all over the world.

These are all services that it will be very difficult to charge for,
just as it has proved nearly impossible to charge for web or e-mail
services. There are just too many good free alternatives: right now,
just to name a few, FWD for directory and voicemail, Ipkall and Sipgate
for DID numbers, several others for both, e2 for fax-to-email
conversion... Premium services will attract some charges, but the bad
old days of monopolistic exploitation achieved through vertical
integration are gone for good, thanks to the unbundling of transport
and service layers and the global access to services allowed by the
Internet model. (Which is why mobile phone providers tried, with WAP,
to enforce "walled-garden" policies: with the result of making of it a
dismal failure).

> Use a single line for phone, data, TV, and future services.

This is not a VoIP service: it's the benefit of using IP for all the
types of communication. And bringing IP bandwidth to a user will be the
only really chargeable service, which is why it is our interest as
users to try our best to prevent monopolies in this area. The real
battle between consumers and suppliers will be in the "last mile"
bringing IP connectivity to each business and residential user.

Enzo
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

"Enzo Michelangeli" <nospam@em.no-ip.com>
> how can one run a business based on pure VoIP?
> The "VoIP provider" business only exists because most VoIP calls, today,
> end up terminated through the PSTN

1995 someone predicted on a telecom conference: "In the past telephone calls
were billed according to time and distance. In the future they will be
billed by bandwitch, volume and latency or other quality parameters." POTS
providers provide flat rates for Intra German calls and Internet providers
offer Flat rates as well as volume tarifs. If you think in this categroy it
does not matte if you transfer you phone call over IP or over POTS. Even the
billing parameters converge between IP ant POTS.

I compare it to the difference between oil and gas heating. You can't escape
the oil price by using gas. It's price will increase too. However gas is
easier to use than oil.

Providers will compete with each other based on the ease of use and value
added features they provide: Create your personal phone book in the
Internet, click on an address and your and your partner's phone rings.
Convert between fax and email. Check your voicemail from all over the world.
Use a single line for phone, data, TV, and future services.

Christian
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

Dear Luiz,

Hi, how are you?

I'm Samuel Kfir-El, an IT Consultant with worldwide experience.

I'm convinced that what you need is in here:

http://www.uninumber.ubifone.com/

For further questions, please do fell FREE to contact me on:
uninumber@gmail.com

Kind Regards,

Sam

-------------------------------------
Luiz Lima wrote:




> Hello all,

> I am working on a competitive analysis project on Europe's top VoIP
> (voice over IP) countries. My focus is on consumer software products
> such as Skype, Yahoo!Messenger, AOL's AIM etc. I am very much
> interested in understanding the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finish and
> Russian markets. Not speaking any of the local languages, it has been a
> challenge...

> I have not found any local products yet, but I am sure they are there!

> So, what I need are some insights on the market situation. I have a
> general ISP and telecom view, but no latest VoIP trends. What are the
> local most important competitors? How do they promote themselves? Any
> alliances with ISPs or start-up phone companies? How do they compete
> with global products such as Skype, MSN, Yahoo! etc? Why would a
> national of any of those countries choose a local solution rather than,
> for example, Skype or a more international SIP-based solution?

> Any information is more than welcome. Please post to the group or send
> to my e-mail.

> Thank you all very much!

> Luiz







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