I had a chance to sit with Jim Tobin, the AOL Executive who is leading their voice efforts into telephony. While a great deal of what we discussed is in the trial stage, I have to say I’m impressed enough to be happy that I still have my AOL account and look forward to actually reviewing the service, that is due to start in 30 days.
In many ways AOL is a lot like AT&T, as they know they can’t put out a product that will cause harm to the brand. They also know they have to address the synergy with Time Warner Cable’s Roadrunner. Right now they plan to focus on selling VoIP to the five million broadband customers they already have and they are not developing a low bandwidth product as some have suspected. At least not for now. What they will get is a very well thought out, power packed offering that does what AOL does for content for sixty million users, in the way of a telephony offering. Something that simple to use, but offers power behind the interface.
You see, for AOL, it’s all about extending the already simple, almost training wheels like experience, that users have come to expect. Based on the feature set and likely final product that they showed me, clearly they have looked at the competition and figured out how to make a VoIP services management easy and simple.
Did they show me anything really new that doesn’t already exist out there? For the most part not really, but I see many things that others don’t. What they did is package it up better, make it easier for users and of course made it more attractive. That said, they do have a lot more in the pipeline that will enhance the users experience, and that will likely come in release two which already appears to be already well in the development pipeline.
One has to look at AOL’s assets, both tangible and intangible to understand their VoIP play better. First is the community, second is their interface and third are their core and assembled technology assets. The biggest asset they have, and it’s a war chest, is the amount of bandwidth credits they have, many with Level3, but really from other carriers who bring them the traffic that rides on their network. These credits, which AOL is currently banking, opens the door to all kinds of possible marketing, pricing and promotional opportunities, that for now Tobin says they are holding back on. They also have a core set of applications, AIM and ICQ come to mind first, that will integrate nicely into the AOL VoIP footprint, as well as an already existing mailbox architecture.
One has to also remember, that phone service is not new to AOL. They sold it in the past and will likely sell it again.
The launch date and pricing are not yet determined, and it won’t be the cheapest or the most expensive. That said, they will have at least three pricing plans, one for local, another for national and a global plan.
Considering how AOL has been looked at as the Internet on Training Wheels by many, their VoIP play shows a very well thought out, smartly designed, easy to use service that takes advantage of so much of what they already have.
In the meeting I suggested that perhaps becoming an MVNO could be in their future, and while they wouldn’t comment, like with a few other comments I made, these folks would never win in a game of poker with Jeff Pulver, but they will likely win a healthy number of AOL users who want a very powerful, yet simplified way to make VoIP calls.
Oh yes, you can also expect AOL to be working with the usual suspects when it comes to the Telephone Adapter (TA)–Motorola, Linksys and Netgear were all mentioned, but they will also have a softphone at some point from a "best of breed" company, but no names were mentioned.
For AOL, this offering could be a way for them to ring up some new revenues in 2005 that goes beyond advertising and subscriber fees in a health way.