Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Time Warner goes VoIP
The Associated Press is reporting that Time Warner is planning to provide VoIP services to its cable customers in a partnership with Sprint and MCI. About time the Baby Bells faced some competition from the *other* owners of the last mile.
The technology will let Time Warner customers make calls with their regular phones, but the calls will travel as packets of data over the cable line that feeds into the house, rather than going through traditional, circuit-based phone wires. At a switching station, the calls will be transferred to either the MCI or Sprint phone networks and into the traditional format that reaches most phone users.
That gives cable companies an efficient way to break into the phone business. Meanwhile, telephone providers are increasingly going after the cable companies by cutting prices on digital subscriber line (DSL) high-speed Internet service and by bundling satellite TV service with local phone bills.
There you have it. Instead of competing with ever-lowering DSL prices by lowering their own prices (which at a ridiculous $45 is the only technological service I use for which prices have gone up and not down over time and no, it has nothing to do with inflation), the cable guys are going to offer an increasing bundle of services, ramp up their broadband speeds and so on.
Good for the consumer and hopefully, this will lead to lower prices in both phone services and broadband services, which in turn will lead to greater broadband penetration.
The technology will let Time Warner customers make calls with their regular phones, but the calls will travel as packets of data over the cable line that feeds into the house, rather than going through traditional, circuit-based phone wires. At a switching station, the calls will be transferred to either the MCI or Sprint phone networks and into the traditional format that reaches most phone users.
That gives cable companies an efficient way to break into the phone business. Meanwhile, telephone providers are increasingly going after the cable companies by cutting prices on digital subscriber line (DSL) high-speed Internet service and by bundling satellite TV service with local phone bills.
There you have it. Instead of competing with ever-lowering DSL prices by lowering their own prices (which at a ridiculous $45 is the only technological service I use for which prices have gone up and not down over time and no, it has nothing to do with inflation), the cable guys are going to offer an increasing bundle of services, ramp up their broadband speeds and so on.
Good for the consumer and hopefully, this will lead to lower prices in both phone services and broadband services, which in turn will lead to greater broadband penetration.
