The Skype model has created a lot of stir in the Telecoms market since its launch and until its demise in to the black hole of Ebay. For one, it has proved that calls over the Internet work and people are willing to use it; however, this model has also proved that giving something away for nothing has no real rewards.
Consumers on the other-hand embrace the model and love the idea of FREE, this in turn had a negative impact on VoIP especially for medium/large enterprises that were looking in to VoIP and discovered Skype, and turn their back on it. Real VoIP is noway near as simple or cheap to deploy as Skype made out to be and these associated cost as usually passed down to consumers on a commercial model. VoIP is still a lot cheaper than PSTN deployment and most opportunities are ready and waiting to be snapped up in emerging markets. Just to give you an idea, I received a call last week from a contact within a large international telecom provider, who is looking to deploy Asterisk in Africa. They are looking for team who can deploy, support and maintain the infrastructure of I quote; "8 potential installations which run from Telco's with just 300k subs through to 8.5mil subs" (we, at Pophongo, are too busy to take this on, however, any interested parties contact me off list to discuss this). Skype giving away 10K minutes, will just result in another failed attempt to make a viable telecoms business.
For those of you that have never spoke to me, which is a majority in this list, I am currently working on a project which will turn this whole argument on its head. Just to give you all a little clue, have a look at http://www.pophongo.com, am not going to say a whole lot more, but what I am going to say is, taking on the Skype model and re-establishing a market after Skype in the VoIP arena is going to be difficult for anyone, so were planning something away from all this chaos....watch this space….
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