Portal Theory With VoIP?

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Some carriers and application server executives think portals may hold the key to VoIP, according to a Forbes article that appeared today.

Portals generate eyeballs, and in many ways can be used to drive qualified traffic that generates new accounts. But, if the carriers are betting on MSN and Yahoo to drive the new users, then someone really needs to figure out how to do it with AOL.

Here’s why.

AOL needs to move customers from dial up to broadband without losing them. VoIP gives them that opportunity. AOL already has VoIP hooks with ICQ, a high speed company in TimeWarner Cable which already sells phone service. By making every TimeWarner Roadrunner customer an AOL phone customer, with free trials, SIP adapters and trial accounts they can keep more, or migrate some who live in the TWC areas over to a better service. The question is, are they smart enough to do it.

2 thoughts on “Portal Theory With VoIP?”

  1. Dial-up also can be used to get not_so_bad_quality. But if company like AOL need several millions of customers to be moved from dial-up to broadband this strategy can be easy used.
    Any ISP broadband operator can start from internal VoIP service. So called user directory with indication who is online and text chat possibilities can be realized. In case of large number of broadband users they can communicate in internal network without using PSTN.
    IXC softswitch for carrier grade providers fully supports such approach. Dialer application supports call forwarding to the PSTN(cellular phone) if user is offline.

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