On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 2:24 AM, Chris Bagnall<li...@minotaur.cc> wrote:
> I think there's another element to this discussion that's not been explored: 
> why people like T-Mobile can offer
> truly "unlimited" calling. The reason I should imagine is simple: they have a 
> huge customer base, and if

>> snipping the support and philiosophy parts>

I totally agree with your reasoning and conclusions, but for several
years I've been convinced that VoIP is not great because it's cheap
(or "unlimited") but because of the flexible and innovative services
it can offer. You've all messed with ideas that wouldn't be easy to
demo without a huge investment. VoIP can be done in the basement and
with a good enough idea, because something very commercially viable.
Most of what Google Voice can do now was being done by asterisk users
four years ago. Asterisk has long been known as the chemistry set of
telephony. (Ok, Swiss knife, if you must be pedantic.)

Our own business uses a hosted pbx and we pay what we believe to be a
fair price for "unlimited" calls for five registered users. I know we
are way below the threshold of profitability for our provider because
we actually use very few minutes. What we pay for is not the minutes,
but the service, reaching a human being within one minute and having
any problem dealt with immediately. Companies like Orange and AT&T are
incapable of this at any price.

To me, VoIP = true support (as opposed the script readers) and
innovative services. This is the real shake out issue that will keep
things competitive, as long as there are innovators out there to bring
new ideas into the mix.

/r

http://VoIPUsersConference.org

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