Carriers step up business and consumer VoIP offerings (includes some ntop)
Features and price points emerge as key differentiation points
April 1, 2004
By: Al Senia
America's Network
americasnetwork.com
AT&T's Martine
Major telecom carriers have escalated their Internet telephony offerings and rolled out a variety of new features in an effort to differentiate themselves more effectively in the VoIP business and consumer markets.
AT&T is among the most aggressive service provider in this realm, rolling out its national CallVantage service with the aim of signing 1 million customers by the end of 2005. The service is available to any broadband subscriber for $40 a month. However, the company is only providing New Jersey and Texas telephone numbers in the initial rollout, which might limit its appeal.
For the monthly fee, subscribers receive unlimited local and long distance calling, voicemail and caller ID and other services.
However, MCI, SBC, Verizon, Vonage and Net2Phone also are moving fast in the Internet telephony arena, announcing a series of deals, enhanced service plans and business alliances that is creating customer excitement and dramatically rattling the still-fledgling VoIP industry.
AT&T DETAILS PLANS
Cathy Martine, senior vice president of Internet telephony and consumer product management for AT&T, says the company aims to convince telecommuters and home-based business users that its VoIP service is unique.
The differentiating lure, Martine adds, is a package of convenient services that utilizes the Web to allow telephone customers to totally manage and easily change their daily phone experience to suit individually, rapidly changing conditions. "The customer experience is going to be very personally managed" under CallVantage, Martine promises.
AT&T's Internet telephony users will benefit from a number of nifty applications. They'll be able to seamlessly forward calls to different locations and numbers on a priority basis; examine detailed call logs; forward their voicemail as e-mail attachments; easily add multiple callers to conference telephone discussions; and even activate a "do not disturb" feature to intercept calls at certain times or from specified callers.
On the business side, AT&T is touting that its VoIP service will be able to dramatically reduce expenses and bring down ROI costs.
With its aggressive marketing move, AT&T appears to be targeting RBOC competitors, who have been stealing long-distance customers in droves, not the existing VoIP providers like Vonage and Net2Phone, whose customer base still is relatively small.
RBOC ACTIVITY
The RBOCs, however, are not exactly sitting still in the VoIP business, although their pitch is likely to emphasize VoIP quality, dependability and low prices.
SBC, for example, recently revamped its PremierSERV Hosted IP Communications Service (HIPCS) and PremierSERV Total IP Service, which are both pure VoIP solutions, to offer improved remote access, Internet access, security and other services. SBC business customers also can link their PBXs into a VoIP network to cut long distance costs. And SBC recently partnered with Nortel Networks to incorporate secure IP features into existing phone systems.
Under this arrangement, SBC consultants install and maintain Nortel's MCS 5100, which works with traditional Centrex or PBX systems, to offer a system that allows businesses to maintain the functionality of their current voice network, but provide new, secure IP features such as call screening, call logging, integrated instant messaging and desktop video calling.
Brian Buffington, executive director of managed services for SBC, says dependable, cost-effective, feature-laden VoIP services are proving popular with business users. "A big concern about VoIP is quality," says Buffington. "The voice traffic goes over our IP backbone, so we can control the quality of it."
SBC is holding off from similar VoIP ventures in the residential market, however. "Residential VoIP is still being tested," a company spokesman explains. "There are some technical issues we have to cover before we can deliver it effectively."
Verizon also is working with Nortel to bolster its VoIP offerings. Verizon intends to offer a comprehensive suite of VoIP and multimedia services for consumers and businesses throughout the U.S. later this year. It will accomplish this by beginning to replace traditional central office switches with packet switches. Nortel will provide the backbone of Verizon's national network migration. "We are literally taking what is known in the industry as the Public Switched Telephone Network and transforming it," says Paul Lacouture, president of Verizon's network services group. "The time is right for this move."
Verizon will offer business customers bundled voice, data and multimedia services and applications, introducing a variety of flexible VoIP-based services to its network. These include instant video calling, unified messaging, call screening and routing. Verizon says it will offer residential customers bundled local and long distance VoIP calling, as well as Internet access, over a single broadband connection.
NEW COMPETITION
Other competitors also have dramatically stepped up their VoIP product offerings:
MCI in early March added new VoIP access and calling capabilities to its MCI Advantage service. The carrier struck a deal with BroadSoft to provide extended hosted communications capabilities and to deliver enhanced voice and data applications. Essentially, MCI is expanding its VoIP service by integrating it with its private IP network. MCI Advantage is a business VoIP voice and data solution.
Net2Phone launched in March an SIP-based product called "VoiceLine for Service Providers" that allows providers to sell hosted telephony services to residential and small office clients.
And VoIP has moved into the consumer retail market, thanks to upstart VoIP provider Vonage. The company recently cut a deal with national retailer Circuit City to market VoIP service through 600 branches. Circuit City will sell the Vonage adapter (which must be hooked to cable modem or DSL cords) and two months of service for $99. Vonage officials say more retail deals are coming. |
