BT: Evenings don't start at 6 o'clock any more

[m419]

And what happens when commercial Voip providers start charging for Ip to Ip calls?

[Turkey Machine]

Originally Posted by m419

And what happens when commercial Voip providers start charging for Ip to Ip calls?

Those that do are in a very small minority and will probably lose customers very quickly. We (company I work for, PM me for details) don't charge for VoIP to VoIP calls for most, if not all, peered providers. Certainly internal calls, including our main telephone number, are free on our VoIP network.

---------- Post added at 21:14 ---------- Previous post was at 20:48 ----------

Originally Posted by m419

I'm not being funny or anything but it is all the landline phone companies putting up there prices.

Er, ours isn't!

Originally Posted by m419

The main excuse is ''Rolling out better broadband and future services''. Maybe, but people should have thought of that when allowing BT to become privatised and allowing more than 1 or two phone companies. It has proven a failure in benefiting the customer. Back in the 90's there was just 3 choices and in the late 80's there was two,well in the advanced telephone exchanges which supported Mercury's 131 and 132 services. Back then, both BT and Cable firms were able to afford offering low cost line rental and phone services because they had the customers to do so, but since the arrival of One Tel,TalkTalk,Tiscali,Sky Talk/Easynet and a few more, they've stolen BT,Cable and Wireless(Mercury) and Cable firm revenues.

If BT was nationalised and was the only phone service around, it would have maximum subscribers and would have all the revenue it needs to upgrade its network rapidly. But since there are many phone companies licenced to dig up streets and compete with BT, it slows them down.

I disagree on this. BT's been a separated entity for a long time (BT Retail, the company that charges customers for their line rental and calls and pays millions for the ads you see around the country, is completely different to BT Openreach, the company which maintains the entire traditional telecoms infrastructure - copper, exchanges, backends, master sockets, you name it it's probably Openreach who maintain it) and had the funds necessary to do the job. They've just done it badly.

Originally Posted by m419

The cheap calls from mobiles won't last forever i'm afraid, mobile phone companies are under a lot of pressure from Ofcom and the European goverment to offer lower cost international roaming rates and several organisations including some mobile network operators such as 3 are pressurising the industry into abolishing termination rates. Mobile phone companies will then look into looking for other ways to make up for lost revenue and the only alternative is increasing outgoing calls,line rental and increasing costs of using miscellaneous services such voicemail,text messaging and surfing the web on your mobile phone.

Agreed. Mobile providers are always looking for ways to make more money, and the more the regulators put the squeeze on their traditional margins the more it hurts the consumer.

Originally Posted by m419

With regards to Skype and Voip services such as Vonage, to be honest its not catching on, why because to get the best value you really need Virgin Broadband as you don't need a phone line which means saving money on line rental, however Virgin Media have even caught onto that too, they offer the Broadband alone service very cheaply to new customers BUT only if you take a Virgin phone line,so you can't do right for doing wrong.

Also, once or if voip penetration levels increase, then they will also increase costs.

At the end of the day,its these expensive call costs that fund and maintain phone networks and provide future services. Voip providers don't have to invest in anything and therefore is a threat to the telecoms industry especially on a financial basis.

Nevertheless, the existing phone companies such as BT,Virgin Media,Cable and Wireless and the 5 mobile networks need to look at ways of getting rid or lowering termination rates otherwise it will remain expensive!

I've left that all in one block, but I disagree entirely with that. VoIP over cable just doesn't work well. Most of the posts on the newsgroups recently that bitch and moan about VoIP being high-latency and packet lossy and lower quality is exactly why it's not the ideal network. Sure, it may have penetration in areas that you can't get a decent phone line for the 100kbit symmetrical bandwidth (estimated max, you can get lower with more efficient codecs) that you need to make or receive a VoIP call, but the quality's laughable.

The company I work for specialises in VoIP telecoms (PM me for details if you want to know more). We've invested a lot in the hardware side to have the best possible quality and the minimum number of hops. The key bit in VoIP is the latency. VM is notorious for having many hops between start and finish points, so your data goes through anywhere between 3 and 24 VM nodes to get to it's destination. We have the minimum hops possible between the modem and the back-end. No fancy round-the-country let's-see-where-we-can-take-your-data routing, it goes straight where it needs to.

We also invested in the Least Cost Routing side of things to do exactly that: reduce the costs on both sides.

So to say "VoIP companies don't have to invest anything" is tarring all VoIP providers with the same messy brush, and that I absolutely disagree with.

For most users, VoIP is unnecessary. For businesses with lots of phones and/or lines, or university call campaigners, VoIP has been an absolute God-send in terms of ease of setting up, costs, interoptability. Ask Rux Burton who they use and why they choose the particular VoIP provider they do, then ask yourself whether you'd prefer installing 200 phone lines for a 1 week calling campaign and having the install bill, line rental and the high phone call costs on top of that, or having a simple VoIP system that just plain works with somebody always on hand to support them if something goes wrong.

As an addendum to that, it's untrue that VoIP will increase costs. BT are investing in moving their entire back-end network over to IP technology (21CN and IP Exchange) for this very reason - cheaper maintaining costs, fewer problems.

[m419]

Very informative especially since your in the actual industry.But tell me something, when BT rolls out IP phone services nationally, will they actually pass the savings onto the customer or will they just keep prices as they are for a long while cashing in thinking that customers haven't noticed.

BT Broadband Talk is an example,its IP based yet they still charge more or less the same for standard UK calls as the basic BT telephone line.

[Turkey Machine]

Originally Posted by m419

Very informative especially since your in the actual industry.But tell me something, when BT rolls out IP phone services nationally, will they actually pass the savings onto the customer or will they just keep prices as they are for a long while cashing in thinking that customers haven't noticed.

BT Broadband Talk is an example,its IP based yet they still charge more or less the same for standard UK calls as the basic BT telephone line.

You're talking about BT Retail, which is known for being the biggest cash cow in the industry. So in all likelihood, yes but not by enough. Hence why we're targeting BT customers.

Note that to switch everyone over to IP is a huge investment. Doing it on the backend is relatively simple. Doing it at the end-user is more involved because it requires a new type of phone. And there are models that plug into the PSTN line as well as connect to the internet (Siemens A580IP as an example).

[m419]

Originally Posted by Turkey Machine

You're talking about BT Retail, which is known for being the biggest cash cow in the industry. So in all likelihood, yes but not by enough. Hence why we're targeting BT customers.

Note that to switch everyone over to IP is a huge investment. Doing it on the backend is relatively simple. Doing it at the end-user is more involved because it requires a new type of phone. And there are models that plug into the PSTN line as well as connect to the internet (Siemens A580IP as an example).

Ahh! Now I see what your saying, my local hospital has an IP phone system linked to Virgin Media's phone network, when I used a phone on a ward, there was a problem and the male voice that says the number has not been recognised was the same as my line at home and there number starts with the same prefix as well. They must be saving a lot by using that!

Do you think BT should have remained as it was, or do you and other providers prefere the new Openreach approach? I think its a complete waste of time myself,ever since they seperated the businesses, costs have gone up a lot such as the installation of a telephone line, between 1997 and 2005 it was about £74.99 and then went up to £125.99 or £137.99 for those paying in installments.

[Turkey Machine]

Openreach is the single provider/maintainer to go to for telco stuff (analogue and digital lines) to sell and maintain. Previously, there was no accountability. So in all honesty, the split probably helped it, but now the company as a whole is far more centralised on profits and balancing the books to pay for the massive rollout of FTTC. BT also don't want to do the legwork needed to get the government's target of 2Mbit to the country by 2017 happening, as a customer of ours had a problem with their line at the exchange end and no amount of changes would get it back to the way it was before fiddling until we said "FIX IT!" to Openreach, and all of a sudden it now works. Amazing what the threat of OTelO does!

---------- Post added at 21:31 ---------- Previous post was at 21:27 ----------

Originally Posted by m419

Ahh! Now I see what your saying, my local hospital has an IP phone system linked to Virgin Media's phone network, when I used a phone on a ward, there was a problem and the male voice that says the number has not been recognised was the same as my line at home and there number starts with the same prefix as well. They must be saving a lot by using that!

Indeed, and it's absolutely those kinds of situations that VoIP is ideal for. Plug a phone into the network and start making calls. If the data network is there for the machines already connected to it, the infrastructure in most business buildings caters for it. Certainly with one job I had, all the phones, computers, printers, plugged into network ports on the walls and fed back into the data room where it was all routed through the switch as necessary to various lines depending on what was connected.