Yahoo! will soon be providing telephone services via the Internet through the popular instant messaging client they have developed. Yahoo Messenger with Voice will not only allow users to make calls to land lines and cell phones but to receive calls as well! The "Phone Out" service will be really cheap to use with a cost of merely $0,01 per minute for the US. Calls to other countries will be $0,019 per minute. Both rates are quite lower from Skype's $0,023 per minute!
Furthermore, Yahoo! will be offering the option to receive phone calls (PhoneIn) for a monthly or yearly subscription of $2.99 or $29.90 respectively. PhoneIn subscribers will be able to select a local phone number to make sure that those calling them will not be charged with long-distance or international call rates. Finally, those who travel frequently will sure benefit from being able to be reached at multiple phone numbers including France, Great Britain and the US.
With this move, Yahoo! directly challenges Skype, which was recently bought by eBay for $2,6 billion. Skype currently has 68 million users while the SkypeOut service, the only Skype service that brings in revenue is used by 2 million users. Despite this popularity, Skype has not yet been profitable.
Almost at the same time with Yahoo!, British Telecome decided to attack Skype as well. The company will be offering VoIP services at cheaper rates for at least five popular calling destinations internationally. British Telecom also states that it's PC to land line call rates are already cheaper than Skype's through the BT Communicator service.
Of course, Microsoft could not be absent from all this! The company has recently signed an agreement with MCI for the joint promotion of using the Internet for local and long-distance calls. This new service will be available in MSN Messenger but will unfortunately be more expensive than the Skype and Yahoo! alternatives, at 0,023 per minute. These rates, however, are only valid for the test period and it is expected that they will be reduced once the service is fully functional. The underlying technology has been developed by Teleo, a company which Microsoft bought last august.
So it seems that we're finally seeing some real competition in the VoIP field and consumers are very likely to gain from it! However, let's not forget the hidden cost of our broadband connections that still make Internet calling more expensive than using our land lines. For VoIP to reach it's full potential more steps need to be taken towards making broadband connections cheaper and more available not only across the US, but across the world!
Why choose VoIP? Two reasons, 1) properly chosen and implemented, IP solutions for key business apps (interoffice voice networking, remote agent/home worker, IP PBX/LAN telephony, etc.) are cheaper to operate, maintain, and upgrade than comparable solutions using switched digital or analog phone service. 2) IP solutions are also more powerful, flexible, feature-rich, and interesting than conventional stuff.
THE BIG MONEY-SAVERS
In pursuing the benefits of VoIP, many IT managers are using the technology and assembling point solutions to their most pressing problems: seeing minimum investment and disruption while obtaining maximum bang for the buck. A second and perhaps third phase of network upgrades will eventually unify these solutions under a single converged architecture.
USE VOIP GATEWAYS FOR INTEROFFICE VOICE/FAX AND DEMARC AGGREGATION
PBX IP gateways give legacy PBXs a new lease on life as participants in VoIP architecture. Nowadays, gateway technology is also packaged in the form of PBX cards, eliminating a stray box and preserving feature support. The gateways also enable least-cost-routing, employing branch offices as POPs - carrying calls from office to office over the WAN or Internet, before handing them off to the PSTN for local completion. Alternatively, the gateways can be used to aggregate outbound and inbound connections at a central site, achieving better discounts. They also let you aggregate voicemail, call accounting, and other peripheral applications, reducing overall cost of infrastructure and simplifying maintenance.
GET GATEWAY BENEFITS (AND MORE!) WITH ADD-ON CARDS
Chances are your move to VoIP trunking and IP phones can be accomplished with your current PBX and vendor-supplied VoIP media cards. The main advantage of doing it this way, rather than using a third-party gateway, is feature transparency. PBXs that are networked using internal cards support uniform dial plans, voicemail access, conferencing, call forwarding, and the rest of the PBX bill-of-fare.
IP CONFERENCING AND REMOTE PRESENTATION
IP-based audio, video and data conferencing promises a compelling competitive advantage for organizations of all types and sizes. Businesses can now communicate, coordinate, and collaborate not just internally, but with customers, suppliers, business partners, teleworkers, and branch offices worldwide over IP, leaving behind the centralized conferencing model of the traditional PBX.
VoIP applications create competitive advantage for many organizations. VoIP allows for the creation of new types of powerful applications. The ability to connect to any part of the world, integration with other protocols, routing capability, and IP conferencing are some advancement application over normal phone networks and good reason to use VoIP.
Both James Hayes & San are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
San has sinced written about articles on various topics from VOIP, Guide Guitar and Vacation. Edgar Lee is a VoIP consultant at Lantone Communications, VOIP division. A Singapore company that has extensive experiences in cutting-edge VoIP solutions, Lantone Communications is your trusted partner when your organization needs a specialized. San's top article generates over 135000 views. to your Favourites.