March 2005

America Online has announced a consumer VoIP application, Wanadoo joins the party. The AOL offering will go head-to-head with traditional telephone companies, cable firms and a multitude of start-ups competing for the mainstream-bound VoIP market.

AOL CEO Jonathan Miller announced the decision at VON Spring 2005 trade show, “Within the next month, AOL will launch an Internet phone product, and we believe it will be a truly differentiated product. The initial launch targets specific markets and AOL users.”

Miller added, “Consumers just want something that is reliable and easy to use. Over 60 percent of consumers don’t know what VoIP is or don’t understand what it is, but it is possible they could be sold on it.”

“AOL aims to closely integrate the VoIP service with AOL’s popular email and IM service to create a sort of “communications dashboard. “It will become the centrepiece of the way consumers handle their communications online”, beamed Miller.

The company’s customers will continue to use their traditional phones, but will plug them into adapters connected to their broadband source rather than the socket provided by the telephone company.

The AOL product will also allow customers to turn IM sessions into phone calls when one of the parties enters the phrase “Can I Call?”

At this point the AOL product will “almost instantaneously” switch the communications session to a VOIP call if the user on the other end is “present.”

To provide the VoIP service, AOL are teaming up with Level 3 Communications who will provide the infrastructure needed to comply with federal 911 and number portability requirements and Sonus Networks who will be responsible for the softswitching.

The company is yet to divulge pricing details for its US service or timetable roll outs in international markets.

Wanadoo

Meanwhile, the stampede for ISPs to reinvent themselves as telcos continues with the French Telecom-owned Wanadoo announcing a new voice over broadband service last week.

For £4 a month, Wanadoo’s broadband customers can get a slice of the free phone call action to other UK landlines during evenings and weekends.

The ISP maintains that the cost of other calls made using its “Wanadoo Wireless and Talk” service are cheaper than BT, while calls to other “Wanadoo Wireless and Talk” punters will cost customers jack diddly squat.

The new service uses Wanadoo’s “Livebox” wireless box to route calls over broadband. Wanadoo’s broadband telephony service is designed as a secondary phone line service for now, but the ISP is hatching cunning plans for it to replace a household’s primary phone line.

Wanadoo UK’s chief exec, Eric Abensur, was on hand to give it the big one, boasting that his company was at the “cutting edge of this fantastic technology”.

He went on to say, “As broadband becomes a standard feature in UK homes – like turning on a tap it will become second nature to use it for all types of services – such as plugging a phone or two into your home network or watching TV, and we look forward to making further exciting announcements over the coming months.”

Wanadoo’s VoIP service launched in France last year, but was riddled with so many bugs that almost 300 Wanadoo staff in France went on strike before Christmas in protest at having to deal with extra-stroppy customers complaining that the service didn’t work.

However, a spokeswoman for Wanadoo UK said that call centre staff in the UK had been fully trained to support the product. “We’d only launch a product that we have confidence in,” she said.

AOL
Wanadoo

Skype is proudly trumpeting the fact that more than 1,000,000 users have subscribed to SkypeOut, their premium service offering global calling to PSTN numbers for local rates.

This makes Skype the 1000lb gorilla of the VOIP-category product, worldwide.

“We’re thrilled about Skype’s growth and credit support from users who have told their friends and family about the cost and quality gains they’ve found with Skype,” cooed CEO and co-founder Niklas Zennström, speaking from the CeBIT tradeshow in Hanover, Germany.

“Our one million SkypeOut users prove that savvy consumers will pay for value – and we will continue to delight users by delivering the software and services they seek to realize the potential of modern communications.”

Describing themselves as the ‘fastest-growing global communications tool in history’, Skype have got a shedload of facts to back up their claims: the company now boasts more than 29 million registered users and they’re adding more than 155,000 new users per day.

At most times, 2 million people are simultaneously using Skype to connect with friends, family members and colleagues and ‘Skypers’ have now talked for approx six billion minutes.

The company intend to hang on to their numero uno position with soon-to-be-announced new premium offerings and enhancements to the basic free service.

Hotly anticipated is Skype’s new voice messaging service which is currently in beta trial with pundits expecting an April roll out.

New information on Skype’s website has the pricing details:

“The price for Voicemail is 5 Euro for a 3 month subscription or 15 Euro for a 12 month subscription. If your billing address is in the EU, you will be charged 15% VAT when you purchase a Voicemail subscription. Therefore the prices will be €5.75 (US$6.70/£4) for 3 months and €17.25 (US$20/£12) for 12 months. However, a Voicemail subscription comes free with purchase of a SkypeIn number!”

There’s also a new section in the Skype knowledge base describing SkypeIn, the forthcoming additional pay-for service where you can get a phone number and people can call you (similar in concept to what rival Telcos offer).

Skype have also stated their commitment to expanding platforms beyond the Mac, Linux, Windows and Pocket PC platforms currently available, although there’s been no indication of a Palm release (a source of much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Palm community).

Skype