“A lot of manufacturers make devices that want to be Vonage-enabled.” —Vonage’s Louis Holder |
Of course, no discussion of VoIP service would be complete without a mention of Vonage Holdings Corp. So xchange Editor in Chief Paula Bernier gave the company a call. Here is an edited excerpt of her interview in late January with Vonage’s Executive Vice President of Product Development Louis Holder.
X: Vonage now offers VoIP services in how many markets?
Holder: 40 U.S. markets.
X: How many users or lines?
Holder: 100,000 lines.
X: Who is the target customer?
Holder: The main focus is residential. It’s 80 percent that are residential and 20 percent business. The sub-20 line businesses are our target.
X: It looks like Vonage now offers three calling plans: a $34.99 Premium Calling Plan with unlimited calls to the United States and Canada; a $24.99 Unlimited Local Plan with unlimited local and regional calls and 500 longdistance minutes; and a $14.99 Basic 500 Plan with 500 minutes a month in the United States and Canada. Correct?
Holder: Those are our consumer plans. We also have a $49.99 plan including unlimited calling and a free fax line for business. $39.99 for 1500 minutes of unlimited calling and 3.9 cents for all additional calls, also with a free fax line.
X: How does that compare to voice service pricing from competitors?
Holder: The average U.S. phone bill is $72 a month for consumers. Even at $39.99, our high end, it’s very competitive. We also offer all features like caller ID for free.
X: What do Vonage’s services look like?
Holder: Voice mail can be played as messages online through a Web portal. That way you can have message e-mailed to you if you’re on the road.
X: There’s been a lot of talk about the voice quality offered by Vonage.
Some of my sources say it’s not so good. Some compare it to the quality of voice offered on some cellular networks. How would you characterize the quality of your voice service?
Holder: Pretty good. It’s equal to a PSTN call, which is far better than a cellular call.
X: What does Vonage do as far as internal measurement and monitoring of its network and services to ensure reliability and high voice quality?
One of Motorola’s Vonage Setups |
Holder: A lot.We have a 24x7 network operations center.We monitor the end device in people’s homes, so we know when it’s offline or out. We do monitoring of carriers that do call termination for us. We automatically reroute to another gateway if there’s congestion or an outage. We monitor cable companies’ broadband connections to make sure they’re up. Most of the monitoring stuff we built ourselves.
X: Vonage recently announced a relationship with Texas Instruments (TI), saying the companies are working together to provide VoIP equipment designers and manufacturers new opportunities for the development and deployment of VoIP products compatible with the Vonage telephony network. What does that mean?
Holder: A lot of manufacturers make devices that want to be Vonage-enabled. TI would design a chipset that is Vonageenabled and will sell them to equipment manufacturers. So like PDAs or a Wi-Fi phone could be used ... for Vonage. We hope to see a chipset ready in the second quarter this year. By early third quarter, products based on that should be available.
X: What’s next for Vonage?
Holder: This year new devices in the network will give customers more choices. Also, we’ll focus on additional SOHO and small business features like adding a conference bridge.We’ll also move into Canada in a few months.
