Vodafone costing users out of VoIP May 8th, 2007  

Dean Bubbley makes a great post about Vodafone’s new pricing policy.

I have discussed before how the mobile operators are running scared - firstly with regulation and secondly with locking VoIP features from mobile devices. 

Now Vodafone, whilst trying to address how they are going to remain profitable, have turned their eye towards charging customers for using VoIP services.

Dean believes that the way that Vodafone has set-up their pricing model is:

cleverly (cynically?) crafted to mitigate the risk of any substitution by 3rd party services.

This of course is a potential hot potato for VoIP providers when this becomes introduced in July. However, because Rebtel’s service initiates the VoIP session by dialling a local number – my understanding is that Vodafone’s new policy will not affect us – unlike the competition.

I’ll be watching this space to see how the other operators follow-suit. Rest assured – at Rebtel we are trying to stay one step ahead of the cartel so whilst this policy hits a lot of customers hard – it shouldn’t make any difference to the Rebtel community.

Quick edit:

Since publishing this post, Orange has come clean about it’s policy towards VoIP. The CNET quote from Orange explains they “actively discourage VoIP”:

Orange said on Monday. “We would discourage any customer from using VoIP through the mobile Internet due to the quality of service they may experience. We are looking to launch our own high-quality IM service in the next few months, which will deliver a far superior customer experience to currently available services.”

Looks like Orange is running scared too!

Technorati Tags: VoIP, mVoIP, Rebtel, Ofcom, Vodafone, Mobile Operator Cartels, Voice 2.0

By: admin