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December 18, 2003

VoIP Continues to make Headline News...

Six months ago it would have been amazing to wake up to more than one story in the business press which covered a related VoIP announcement.

December, 2003 will be noted in the history of communications as the time when a large number of US and now Canadian service providers announced their intentions of launching their own VoIP services in 2004.

While I think it is great to see so many established service providers announcing their VoIP strategies, my hope is that sometime soon these companies will figure out ways to compete with each other on things other than price. Otherwise most of what we end up seeing is a game of price arbitrage driven by some who can afford it in a manner similar to the way that supermarkets take advantage of "loss leaders" to get people into their stores.

Hopefully somebody will realize that with the advent of VoIP comes the opportunities to deliver a whole new set of services never before practical or possible. These kinds of services represent something I started calling "purple minutes" a couple of years ago at our VON Conferences.

I look forward to seeing purple minute services deployed during 2004.

Posted by jeff on December 18, 2003 03:45 AM | Permalink

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