A new digital technology has arrived that could help you make significant cost savings on your phone bill while at the same time, create a number of new possibilities for the ways in which you use your phone at home.
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has been big news in the corporate sector for quite some time. The technology has allowed companies such as Dell to make considerable cost savings by setting up call centres in India to serve its European customers. Now the technology is making its way down the food chain to small businesses and consumers.
How it works?
VoIP technology works by transmitting voice calls as packets of data over Internet traffic, rather than creating a dedicated circuit for the voice call which is the traditional way in which a phone call is made over the PSTN such as that operated by Eircom. Because the PSTN system is still required to carry the majority of phone calls, special software is required to connect the VoIP calls to the PSTN network. Sean Loughman, head of innovation at Eircom, told me that his company has plans to offers services based on VoIP technology before the end of the year. He also believes that the major owners of the telcos infrastructure such as the incumbent Eircom and others such as Esat BT will have significant advantage over virtual VoIP service providers as they have control over the broadband access and as such have a better handle on managing the quality of the voice calls. The first virtual VoIP service provider for the home market is Blueface, founded by Aaron Clausen, an Australian repatriated to Ireland.
Blueface (www.blueface.ie) has been fully operational for the last four months. Since then, Clausen told me that over 100 users have tried the service out and that at least 50 people use the service on daily basis. A data centre managed by Telecity hosts the software and network infrastructure which Blueface uses to connect its Internet packet-based telephone system with the more traditional PSTN telephone service.
Broadband required
To subscribe to the service, a home user needs broadband and either a hardware VoIP phone which they plug into the broadband modem, or alternatively a software-based phone that is installed on a PC. The company told me that their objective is not to challenge Eircom or Esat BT for its DSL and phone service subscribers but instead to target their phone customers who subscribe to wireless broadband services. As Clausen says “Wireless broadband users who no longer want to pay EUR*25 phone line rental to Eircom but would rather instead route their incoming and outgoing calls over their wireless broadband connection.” This market is in an embryonic stage with Clausen estimating that there are “just 5,000 wireless subscribers Ireland-wide.”
More attractive services
It would seem that the biggest attraction for routing phone calls over the Internet would be the savings that could be made by doing this. In fact, local calls made with Blueface are marginally less expensive that those made with the larger PSTN operators. It is with international calls, that real savings can be made with VoIP, Clausen estimates in the region of “400 to 500%”.
It is time that the major phone service providers in Ireland started to offer VoIP services. Quite apart from the cost savings that would allow consumers to make on their monthly phone bill, the technology would allow the operators to create new revenue streams for themselves by converging traditional phone services with the communicational and multimedia IT services that users experience with their Internet-connected PCs everyday. The applications for a converged phone and data service in one include voice mail to e-mail, fax to e-mail, video phone; voice recognition, text to speech; multi-phone ringing in the home for incoming calls and the so called “follow me” services which will allow a caller pick you up on your mobile or on your PC if they cannot get you on your primary house phone. I think that the majority of consumers are always more than happy to pay extra for any digital service that can help make their working and personal lives a little easier so let’s see the bigger telcos make more of this exciting digital technology and create the services now rather than later. Before 2005 is out, we may all have our 076 VoIP number prefixes.
29/03/05
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