John Linton Exetel has been using VoIP in its Australian operations for over four years now and in its Colombo offices ever since we set up the company there. As well as using VoIP we heavily use MoIP and only have one or two PSTN lines in both offices for 'testing purposes'. While there are now many other reasons that improve our operations that can't as easily be done on 'standard' telephone lines, the main reasons we use VoIP rather than PSTN/ISDN services is of course cost. I would imagine that the overwhelming majority of residential VOIP users only decide to use VoIP because of cost.
So here's the thing - what happens if the majority of PSTN calls a residential user makes were 'free'? Both Telstra and Optus Retail have moved towards this type of offer and it is something that Exetel have been considering but have never been in a position to do. I was talking to one of the people who 'analyse' the, publicly listed telcos who, quite rightly, took the view that TPG's $60.00 unlimited ADSL plans for '$30.00' plus '$30.00' for the phone line were very effectively combating Telstra's wave after wave of "welcome home" offers but that their call charges were too high. I pointed out to him that anyone who thought the call charges were too high would use VoIP but agreed that the majority wouldn't do that so the profit from voice calls at those rates would make a healthy contribution.
So is the 'challenge' for today's home communications provider to meet TPG's price point of $60.00 for unlimited downloads and 'trump' its very expensive telephone call charges by offering unlimited local, STD and calls to Optus mobiles? Given the apparent appearance of network under provisioning by TPG perhaps unlimited everything is going to become the offer de jour? It will be interesting to see what Telstra now does with wire line telephone calls and, to a lesser extent, how Optus reacts.....and in a very minor sense how companies like Exetel can 'react'. Another indication of falling results by 'service industries' is explained here:
http://www.theage.com.au/business/services-sector-weakens-in-november-20101203-18ioj.html
We have talked to both Telstra and Optus about how they/we can improve our residential ADSL offers in the new year but have not made much progress. However there may be ways we can adapt our various services in terms of bundling wire line based services with ADSL and unlimited telephone calls to be able to offer unlimited ADSL and unlimited voice calls and improve on TPG's current offer in terms of 'free' components which have no embedded 'sting in the tail'. If all local/STD/CTM Optus calls were free and the customer could use VoIP (if he she were capable of doing that) for CTM Telstra/Vodafone then why would anyone buy a TPG service?
Ihave previously mentioned that "free" was the only offer that was better than "unlimited" in general terms in consumer marketing but I really have no basis for making that statement other than personal observation over the years (the number of times I have seen it used). It will be interesting to see in this increasingly VoIP world how standard telephone call charging changes? Perhaps rather than "free", all PSTN telephone calls will be charged at 10 cents per call/untimed?
I don't know whether we would be able to make such an 'offer' work given the costs that the carriers would charge but it's a thought. Personally I doubt that "unlimited downloads" would appeal to the sort of person who would like unlimited calls so there would be some guess work (oops - I meant research/analysis) to be done particularly on the usage patterns of our current customers. But I really do think that 'free' is a better way to go than unlimited.
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