VOIP etc > Voice Over IP - VOIP > VOIP Tech Chat > no room for multiple similar products in the mainstream?

no room for multiple similar products in the mainstream?

I think you could safely add Ooma to your list, in the USA, and Primus and Comwave in Canada.

Vonage, MagicJack, and Ooma have at least one thing in common: They spend huge amounts of money on advertising. This means that anyone who watches TV or reads a newspaper probably knows of at least one, and likely all three. Knowing that, one question to ask is what that means to you and me, the end users. Someone has to pay for all the advertising. I'd rather use a VoIP provider that doesn't spend as much money on PR. Vonage doesn't care if I leave them because they'll have tons of other new customers to replace me. The VoIP providers I use have to provide actual good service to motivate me to remain a customer. Having said that, both business models can be argued to be equally valid.

I've never seen an ad for Skype, (not to say they don't exist, just that I haven't seen one) but I believe being first to bring free video calling to the general public certainly didn't hurt them.

I think if Callcentric or VoIP.ms or AcroVoice (examples) spent as much money as Vonage does on advertising, pretty soon they too would be a household name. But I think these companies, and others like them, already consider themselves very successful, even though they're not as widely known as the Vonages of the industry.

I never used CU See Me, but didn't NetMeeting require you to know the user's IP address and set up port forwarding? I was thinking Skype may have been the first to make the technology available to those without any real technical knowledge.

reply to Mango

reply to tom thomas
i know some people would find this hard to believe but i have not owned or watched more than a minute here and there or TV in the last 20 years. so TV advertising is not something in am 'in the know' about.

if it is the advertising though i still find it interesting that this many years into the launch of VOIP the mainstream products are still so different with their own niche.

compared to another product also advertised on TV, soap has so many similar brands all side by at the supermarket. the competition is on cleaning strength and price.

one of the reasons i bring this up is that the way the VOIP market sits now there is no real head on competition between household names. skype is for video calls, vonage to replace the landline, MJ is for the extra line plugged into the laptop.

if we had four or five companies all offering(and advertising including perhaps on TV) near identical services but competing on audio quality, customer support and price than i believe we would actually have much higher consumer adoption.

the smaller players do compete as a state above but they are pretty much out of the mainstream. i never in real life hear people mention the companies we talk about regularly here on this forum.

[I made a really long post last night then I accidentally deleted it before posting. Aargh!!]

Summary:

To manufacture automobiles, you HAVE to be a pretty big company. As far back as the 1940's Preston Tucker found this out. He was a good man who was persecuted, unfairly prosecuted, and who died at age 53 essentially of a broken heart. (BTW those few Tucker cars that were made are worth a fortune today!)

To make soap, you pretty much HAVE to be a big company, simply in order to get the all-important shelf space in the supermarket, or to get past the vetting process that WalMart imposes on vendors.

And so forth.

But with VoIP----

You could be a huge company like Vonage. So large that the security deposit they had to give the landlord for their HQ building is [seven million dollars]! What a waste. Why does a VoIP company need a huge green lawn?

OR you could be a more mid-size provider like Packet8 (8x8).

OR you could be a smaller provider.

OR you could even be an ultra-small company with fewer than 7 employees, as I think is true for F9 and CWU and perhaps Anveo.

And each type of company has a niche, each type can be profitable.

And in fact, it is the smaller ones who do the most innovations.

In VoIP, one does not have to be huge to be successful.

PX,

when it comes to automobiles Chrysler, ford and GM all make 4 door family sedans. that would be vonage. they also all make pickup trunks(skype) and compact two doors(magicjack).

with mainstream VOIP there is no direct head on competition it seems.

except of course with the small lesser known companies.

reply to tom thomas
How about netTALK? They are in most retail stores in US and Canada now.

reply to tom thomas