--- On Tue, 3/17/09, SIP <[email protected]> wrote: > Where, then, is the business plan?
Grand Central never had one. Google Voice is probably going to be the more corporate'd cousin and there will have to be some sort of advertising or charging to get the cash flowing. They say they'll be selling international calls and that's going to pay the bills, but I can tell you for a fact it will not. For starters there is no possible way they could offer better rates than smaller VoIP providers - and they don't accept SIP calls anyway. It's going to be a glorified Calling Card system - and not a particularly cheap one either. It'll fail miserably in paying the bills IMHO. > With this in mind, it seems that cost comes first and > foremost, and service quality second. Yes and no. People are more than willing to pay a few extra bucks as long as it's competitive - if they feel they are getting a good deal and good value overall. > But here is Google, pushing VoIP tech Google Voice is NOT VoIP. There is no way to make a SIP call through it. To make a free call through GV you'd need to first call GV to begin with - making it a Calling Card system rather than a VoIP provider. The simul ring features are nice and all, but you still need to have some sort of phone service before you can use it. I think this is the biggest weakness in GV - it is not going to be the main communications hub it's glorified to be- simply because it is *not* a central point of communications. Sure- people will use it for varying purposes, but the way it is built by definition prevents it from being your MAIN phone solution, which in essence makes it a niche product at best. Is it innovative? maybe. Is it cool? sure. Is it game-changing? absolutely not. > With its constant marketing steamroller, and its massive > brand recognition, I don't see, honestly, how 95% of the > non-facilities-based consumer voice products out there will > stand up to it. Why? GV doesn't even compete with a regular VoIP provider directly - they don't offer SIP and you can't hook up anything to GV, let alone an adapter or IP phone. -- Nitzan http://www.comparevoipproviderrates.com _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
