Cable Data News yesterday posted a story about how the cable industry is and could react to the pressures of “free” telephone service.
I think we continue to see a classification of phone services into three or four categories currently:
1. PSTN – You get this from a local phone company
2. PSTN Replacement – Vonage, CallVantage, Broadvoice, VoicePulse, Packet8, VoiceWine, AOL’s Total Talk, Yahoo BB in Japan, etc.
4. Next Generation Voice Which Lets You Talk and Terminate – Skype, Yahoo Messenger, GizmoProject, Wavigo, Peerio, MSN Messenger or other softclients that let you reach a designated party without the use of the PSTN or which can access or be accessed by a PSTN gateway that the provider has enabled.
Then there is PhoneGnome which easily bridges all of the above without the user having to know or do anything except dial.
What we are seeing is the stratification of services, and the need for more deeply conducted Usage and Attitude studies amongst intenders and current heavy users of all of the services. Younger Internet users are already familiar with chatting over IM. As voice over IP quality continues to improve their reliance on land lines and cell phones will wain and more of their time spent talking will be over their Internet connections. That’s where the cable MSO’s will be able to lower prices.
What amazes me is that none of the cable companies have released an IM for IP type community tool. All they seem to do is recast technology, not break any new ground. That’s one more reason for what I call the Dumb Pipe argument. Just let me have my IP connection and the apps will come from somewhere else.