Sprint took two forays into new wireless business models today, announcing a new program to sell fixed/mobile convergence service to its wholesale VoIP customers and a deal to collaborate with Grid Net to supply smart grid connectivity over WiMax — a network to which Sprint in turns buys wholesale access from Clearwire.
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Archive for the ‘VoIP’ Category
Sprint looks for new business in smart grid, wholesale FMC
Why the time is right for a Cisco/Skype deal
It’s still just a rumor, but repotedly Cisco is aiming to acquire over-the-top VoIP pioneer Skype before its upcoming planned IPO. The rumor was first reported on TechCrunch.com and of course triggered rounds of speculation. Now that the initial spin has died down, it’s interesting to ask: Is now the right time for Cisco to be making such a purchase, a deal that just a few years ago would have probably ticked off its enterprise customers and infuriated its carrier partners.
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VoIP lines reach 21 million subs, 13% of wireline market
In part because traditional wireline service is shrinking as fast as VoIP is growing, voice-over-IP subscribers now account for 13% of wireline telephone service in the U.S, or about 21 million users. That’s according to a report released this week by the FCC (PDF). Those numbers are interesting in their own right but are even more important, as the commission tees up new approaches to regulating both the traditional voice and broadband sectors of the industry.
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Vonage taps Amdocs for back-office overhaul
Amdocs this week won a big BSS deal with consumer VoIP services provider Vonage, gaining the opportunity to support new billing and service packages — including Vonage’s touted mobile VoIP apps. The operator will need to rely on more innovative packaging and service delivery as it competes not only with incumbent providers, but increasingly with mobile operators pitching wireless services as a wireline replacement.
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Verizon rolls up digital voice into FiOS bundle
Verizon this week pulled its digital voice service (under the name FiOS Digital Voice) up into its FiOS triple- and quad-play bundle options. The service — now available in FiOS markets including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Delaware, Pennsylvania and California — includes 21 packaged features, including live voicemail screen, online call manager and caller ID on TV, Verizon said.
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AT&T’s VoIP outage casts light on service reliability
AT&T this week suffered a major, albeit relatively brief outage, of its U-verse voice-over-IP service, impacting just over 1 million customers across 22 states. The outage raised questions about the reliability of voice services, though the cause of the outage remains unreported.
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Skype, Google, Cisco and the spectrum of videoconferencing — the opportunity for telcos
Videoconferencing is still a killer app, isn’t it? While today it remains a bit on the fringes, interest in consumer-focused videoconferencing from the desktop and perhaps even more intriguingly via mobile devices continues to hold strong. Need evidence? In recent days and weeks, Google purchased GIPS, in part for its HD voice codecs but also its videoconferencing technology, which could get added to the Android platform; Skype started rolling out broader support for group video calls; and Cisco dropped hints about a $500 home telepresence setup for consumers.
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Comcast shows strength with video, broadband, VoIP adds
It may be the “worst company in America” (according to a cheap shot from Consumerist.com) but Comcast otherwise is having a very good week, reporting Q1 earnings today highlighted by across-the-board growth. Revenue grew to $9.2 billion for the quarter, up 3.8% versus a year ago. Diving deeper into subscriber numbers, the cable operator added 427,000 digital video, 399,000 broadband and 273,000 VoIP subscribers for the quarter — in the process growing total revenue per video customer to $122.98, up 6.3%.
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Google VoIP and 3G Skype still MIA — for now
Mobile VoIP has been mostly a curiosity so far, largely because the two potential game-changers in this market — Skype and Google — have been slow to leap in head first. But that could be changing. TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington — a huge Google Voice backer with seemingly good sources within the company — reports that Google has developed and started using internally a stand-alone desktop VoIP client, leveraging its Gizmo5 acquisition. The ability to make real VoIP calls — rather than today’s “match-maker” Google Voice calls, which require a regular phone line — would likely also soon find its way to Google’s Android devices. Meanwhile, Wired speculated that the new iPhone OS’s capability to multitask could bring Skype-over-3G calling to the iPhone, even though Skype’s most recent iPhone app release is still limited to Wi-Fi calling.
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Just how big is Skype’s telco bet?
As the Apple iPad launches this week, the biggest question might just be: What is it good for? Reading and viewing movies seem to be the big use case winners so far. But can the iPad be a communications or collaboration device? That’s less clear. Out of the gate, Skype has updated its mobile app to run on the iPad (though only in Wi-Fi mode). TruPhone has delivered a version of its VoIP-over-Wi-Fi mobile app for the iPad as well (PDF). Cisco, meanwhile, announced a version of its WebEx Meeting Center for the device, as well.
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