Showing posts with label digital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital. Show all posts

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

"Digital Phone Service" is a Marketing Term for Relabled, Expensive VoIP


The other day, a neighbor came by to tell me about the great deal he got on bundled internet and phone service through the broadband internet company. He had just ditched his old AOL dial up service and had Qwest broadband installed, providing him with a high speed DSL internet connection for around $27 per month. This is a super deal indeed!

He then proceeded to brag about the phone service package he bought from Qwest for $45 a month, which gives him unlimited local and long distance calling within the United States, as well as three free calling features for his phone. He was so excited about this deal and the money he would save that I didn't have the heart to tell him he could have done much better if he had gone with a true VoIP provider instead of "bundled" service with his broadband company.

This fellow obviously didn't know about the internet phone service choices that are now available to anyone with a high speed internet connection. Sure, he's saving money - but if he had known there were better, cheaper options that offer the same high quality service at a fraction of the cost, he would have saved even more precious money and received every available calling feature for free!

This article is dedicated to those of you who are considering "bundled" digital phone service through your local phone company, cable company or broadband service provider. Before you go jumping into a package deal to save money on telephone service, learn a little bit about "digital phone service" first - you just might change your mind.

"Digital Phone Service" is a Fancy Marketing term Meaning "Expensive VoIP"

In an effort to make even more money, cable companies and broadband internet service providers are cashing in on the highly profitable internet phone service market by offering what they call "digital phone service". Digital phone service is a fancy marketing term that is used by resellers to describe VoIP internet phone service that is purchased directly from true VoIP providers and resold to consumers at over 100% markup. Digital phone service is the same internet phone service that you can buy directly from the source and save a ton of money.

Cable companies and broadband internet providers enter an agreement with VoIP providers to re-brand and resell their unlimited local and long distance phone service. VoIP is so low-priced already that the resellers pay about the same price per phone number as a consumer would pay, leaving very little profit margin if they simply sold the service at regular "market" prices. Rather than accept a small profit of only a few dollars per month per subscriber, these resellers use clever marketing tactics that involve re-labeling VoIP to "digital phone service", and bundling it with internet service to give you a special "discount price".

Digital Phone Service vs. VoIP - The Price Difference

If you purchased the same unlimited VoIP internet phone service on your own, you would pay between $17 to $25 per month, depending on the provider. "Digital phone service" purchased from your cable company or internet provider costs between $40 to $50 per month.

Since most people switch telephone service providers to save money, it makes much better financial sense to use VoIP internet phone service instead of the bundled phone service offered by local cable, internet, and phone providers. To ensure that you get the best quality VoIP service, be sure to purchase your internet phone service from a highly rated, well known VoIP provider. Some recommended providers to consider are Vonage, Sunrocket, Packet8, Opex and fonVantage.




If you are interested in learning more about VoIP service, please visit: Best VoIP Providers for the Money [http://www.long-distance-savings.com]

Compare VoIP Providers [http://www.long-distance-savings.com/voipcompareproviders.html]

Internet Phone Service - The Future is Here!





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Tuesday, 19 July 2011

The digital divide and the end of Internet freedom

Technology used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and regulatory decisions have shaped the Internet in ways that create nuanced divisions in what people can access. According to a paper out Monday from The New America Foundation, the dangers of current evolution of the Internet are that the World Wide Web becomes segregated by what people are allowed to access and the cost of that access. It’s something I’ve been saying for years here in the U.S. when discussing the merits of using mobile broadband as an answer to the lack of real wireline competition, but the New America report takes it further.

It argues that issues such as packet blocking, different access technologies, broadband caps and cost all can widen the digital divide even if two areas have the FCC-sanctioned definition of broadband as offering 4 Mbps or more. For example, my uncapped 14 Mbps down cable connection for $45 delivers a much different experience than a 10 Mbps LTE connection for someone in College Station, Texas about 80 miles away. How so? My bandwidth isn’t capped and the price is fixed no matter how much I use it, while an LTE connection would cost $50 for 5 GB or $80 for 10 GB. And without wireless network neutrality rules, certain services could be blocked on the LTE connection. Both homes might have broadband, but they are very different connections.

But outside of that well-explored divide, the report charts a more pernicious problem associated with the web — namely the use of packet inspection to segment out certain bits of data for special pricing or for special treatment of the (positive or negative sort). This changes IP services that are all equal into unequal bits that ISPs can now control and charge extra for. I’m not sure I can buy 100 percent into the implicit argument that all packets are equal, when some packets (such as those for streaming video or voice packets) must be delivered in specific order that can be more challenging to maintain over a network, but I do think the trend toward segregating out applications and services is a dangerous one. From the report:

Metcalfe’s law assumes that a new network participant gains the benefits gleaned from other members. As we’re seeing today, however, command-and-control networks sustained by business models based on an all-powerful network operator are bleeding off these networks’ exponential benefits. Whereas such companies stand to gain enormous profits by commoditizing every form of communication possible, the inefficiencies these practices cause (in terms of lowered information flow, network congestion over centralized relay points, greatly lessened innovation at network edges, and so on) are coming at edge-users’ expense. Better technologies exist that would dramatically lower communication costs, increase adoption rates, and fuel new service and application development, and that are synergistic with pre-existing infrastructure.

The New American report looks at Wi-Fi and other technologies to set up local networks. It also goes into the role that devices that are controlled by OS manufacturers or hardware makers play in this lessening of both freedom and the widening of a digital divide between the web someone experiences on an Android phone and what someone experiences on an iPhone (or worse! a feature phone). All in all, it’s worth reading and then rereading as we consider broadband policy in the U.S. and the development of technologies that can help keep access available for all, but also enable everyone to have the same web experience.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Tycho Moon

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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