Never Pay For TV Ever Again

There is no free lunch! That is a common thing we are told from a very early age. In a lot of cases this is quite true and can lead to very embarrassing situations. One of which I experienced myself a number of years ago when I accepted free accommodation in Tenerife in return for attending one meeting about a timeshare. I am sure to this day that the sales person, loosely termed, would have chained me to the chair and tortured me until I had agreed to buy a 3 bedroom apartment in a particularly dusty industrial area of Los Gigantes had he had the chance. Luckily I did not crumble, the SAS training kicked in and at the first opportunity, when he went to check if the particularly potent sangria had arrived, we escaped. The week had been sold to us as “FREE accommodation for the week, see the town and if you fancy it at the end we can talk about possibly selling you this dream for a week each year”, very different to when we were actually there. So there you have it, what appeared to be a freebie turned out to be a week of avoiding the Spanish timeshare Gestapo!

So what does this have to do with voice over IP? Well I’ll tell you. There appears to be a trend in the world of communications at the moment. They are offering things for free: free broadband, free phone calls, free minutes… etc. In short, none of it is free and in some way or another we always pay in the end. So when I was recently looking into how VoIP could give me free phone calls, as is advertised everywhere at the moment, I found the very same thing, no free lunch here. This technology is itself revolutionising the telecoms industry and it is the new buzz phrase on every ones lips. The truth is that it is free, but only to the top of the food chain.

In reality all VoIP services that are out there, or at least all those that I have come across, have some form of charge. Rightly so, as they are providing a legitimate service which it is claimed is rivalling that of PSTN network connections (i.e. BT landlines, cable phone lines etc..). The reason being, that with the exception of Googletalk which in my opinion cannot be classed as a viable replacement of a landline (i.e. no phone number), all of the VoIP suppliers I have come across charge for something in their service, be it subscription charges, line rental, call charges for VoIP to landline calls and so on. Again I don’t feel that this is a bad thing as most of the companies also supply levels of service and customer service that you simply would not get with a free system.

So why is the move to VoIP such a slow process? Surely we are seeing enough cost savings with the main service providers, the likes of Skype, Vonage , VoIPtalk, to justify people taking up VoIP in their droves. The answer I feel lies in the proliferation of the word free. People are often very wary of free services and free products as like I was offered with my holiday. In the main, the majority of people are suspicious of VoIP as they don’t understand the technology and they think that because it is internet based it is not safe. I recently had this conversation with my girlfriend. We were living away from each other and were spending a fortune on calls. I suggested that as I already had a Skype account that she should get one also and we could talk for free. Her reply to me was “for free, that’s just not the case. We have to pay for the Skype -in number which is 30 euros for twelve months and also it’s just to much hassle”. “Thirty Euros for 12 months as opposed to £35 every month” I replied. She then told me her real concerns. She didn’t trust the security or the reliability of the connection. There it was. Case closed. Argument over. There was no coming back from that as I’m sure any man will tell you. Once a womans mind is made up there is little or nothing you can do to change it.

My point in this article is this: the industry needs to show that in some cases, it’s not always just be too good to be true, that VoIP does provide a real benefit and publicise VoIP to the masses, which in fairness I think is happening, but not quickly enough. I would like to see more advertising campaigns, more canvassing locally, and for the security issue to be address publicly. I think if people could see just how simple getting connected with Skype , Vonage or a Voiptalk is they will start to sign up in their droves. Maybe this will happen in time. The same happened with mobile phones at first. However until the simplicity and benefits of VoIP filters through to people this will not change. They will pay a little more for something that they trust, something that has served them well, a comfort blanket if you will.

I think in the end we will end up talking over a converged network for both voice and data in one way or another. My concern is that it will still be under the control of the trusted large telephone corporations who will still charge a premium. For now let’s hope one day it is free for you and me, well some of it at least.

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