BellSouth Launches Residential VOIP
The service, called BellSouth Digital Phone Service, has already been launched in one market -- Gainesville, Fla. -- and will be rolled out in more areas in the coming weeks, according to a BellSouth sales support team member. The service includes features such as caller ID, call waiting, voicemail, and the like.
The service will eventually be marketed to BellSouth's FastAccess broadband customers throughout the whole of the RBOC's service region, offering unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada for $29.99. The carrier also plans to extend the service to small business users for $59.95 per month.
The FastAccess service costs between $24.95 and $46.95 per month, depending on the speed of the connection.
In an email response to questions, BellSouth said: "We are broadening our portfolio of consumer services with BellSouth Digital Phone service. This new service is another example of our commitment to provide customers with the greatest choice when it comes to their communications and entertainment services. We expect customers to continue to benefit from traditional telephony bundles, as well as next generation offers. Our goal is to meet a variety of communications needs across our customer base."
8x8 spokesman Richard Medugno said his company had no comment to make at all, and then hung up.
BellSouth is currently developing its own broadband voice service, with Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU) as its systems provider, but that's thought to be at least a year away from being ready. (See Lucent Lands BellSouth IMS Deal.)
In the meantime, the carrier is coming under competitive pressure from the likes of Vonage and cable operator Cox Communications Inc. (NYSE: COX), and likely felt the need to offer a VOIP service to its broadband users as soon as possible.
More than a year ago, BellSouth was reselling Vonage Holdings Corp.'s VOIP service in a limited test called "DSL Talking," a Vonage spokeswoman tells Light Reading. "I don't really have a reaction to them selling VOIP -- we welcome them to the marketplace," she says. "We already compete with 8x8 and other RBOCs who are selling their own form of VOIP. Now, BellSouth has been added to that list."
8x8's stock is up 22 cents, a hefty 18 percent, to $1.44 today. BellSouth's share price is up 22 cents, less than 1 percent, to $27.64. — Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading
— Mark Sullivan, Reporter, Light Reading, contributed to this story
Packet8 took a strategy of keeping what services they had as quality and offering a discount because they did not have the full range of services Vonage had. Now that has changed. Packet offers the full range of service Vonage has and the quality for what they offer is excellent.
The two companies now offer the same service and both have done a great job in growing their companies. Vonage now has commercials on TV and spending a lot of time advertising. Packet8 has taken a strategy of word of mouth and getting their product in electronic stores as their product does well in selling itself.
One of the biggest knocks in with VOIP carriers is customer service on the technical side. The time it takes and effectiveness in solving the problem. In addition to that, keepimg your same number (called porting) also took longer than advertised. Some had nightmares. Since both use level 3 as their provider for porting both and all VOIP carriers suffered greatly in trying to manage this.
All this has changed. There have been many upgrades and now the two companies are emerging as very strong players with Vonage currently having the most customers for VOIP carriers and Packet8 2nd.
Because of this many large telephone companies have been losing customers to these VOIP carriers. In order to keep their customer base, the large players have been forced to try to roll out VOIP service. Still we are finding the large telecommunication players are charging almost twice as much.
Both Packet8 and Vonage offer wonderful service now at very competitive rates and offer a ton of services they would normally cost a lot of money using the regular home line service.
The technology is now refined, working great and very competitive with other services.
A very nice feature both companies offer is call blocking. That is if you get telmarketers calling you, you can simply have them blocked forever. You don't have to worry about them calling you 6 months later.
Free voice mail service, so you don't need an answering machine or call forwarding. If you want, you can even have your phone messages forwarded to you via e-mail.
I am a strong supporter of VOIP and prefer the Vonage and Packet 8. I use packet8 because they are less expensive and still trying had to gain more customers.
I live in Long Beach, CA
typically charges are like this:
Telephone Bill w/ no Long Distance = $35.00/Mo w/taxes
Dial up ISP = $10.00
High speed cable 3 Meg = $20.00/Mo
Packet8 telephone = $21.00/Mo
You actually save money and can also have highspeed internet service. More service less price.
The big guys are charging-last I checked $45.00/Mo and up.