Jeff Pulver, the unofficial godfather of the VoIP business, has been traveling the globe with pulver.com’s regulatory counsel Jonathan Askin and is just now turning his attention toward the FCC’s USF Order, which requires VoIP providers to contribute to the universal service fund. It has also taken some time for the FCC to push its 151-page order out the door.
Aside from the first-time application of fees on VoIP providers (with fees applied to 64.9% of revenues), the Order has a number of nasty surprises for VoIP companies. One particularly outrageous provision: if a VoIP provider wants to rebut with actual revenue figures the 64.9% “safe harbor” rate, which is supposed to represent the proportion of revenues flowing from interstate services, then that provider is subject to state regulation.
Pulver’s summary of the Order’s details is well worth reading because it reveals just how many rules get spawned with even the simplest FCC decision. Jeff is appealing to the blogosophere to help get the word out about this development. Leading the fight against new regulatory burdens on VoIP providers is the Pulver-backed VON Coalition.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:03 PM | Print | Comments (0)A huge hindrance to Skype, with its extremely low-cost and free Internet-based voice options, is the fact that customers have been tied to their PCs in order to fully take advantage of Skype. Now, as this review by Daniel Greenberg in today’s Washington Post attests, Skype may have leapt this barrier with its new USB Cordless Dual Phone.
It looks and operates like any other cordless landline phone except customers can use the Skype network for only $38/year (contrast that with cable VoIP service, which runs, typically $40 per month) after purchasing the phone for $140. If they want, customers can switch over to regular landline service on the handset. That’s a killer application if I ever saw one.
Moreover, Greenberg says the quality of the Skype phone is top-notch.
In tests, Dualphone voice quality was consistently strong and clear. In most cases, the audio was virtually indistinguishable from that of a land-line phone. Skype calls over the Dualphone didn’t suffer even as the computer performed other functions.
We ran tests of the Skype cordless phone over both wired and wireless Internet connections and placed calls from different locations, including overseas countries. The calls were consistently clear and offered no noticeable delay, whether the call went to a land-line phone, cellphone or another Skype user.
Isn’t it only a matter of time when new developments, such as this dual-mode Skype phone, make customers rethink their cable or even plain-old-telephone voice packages to pay only 1/12 the annual expense for phone service?
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:45 AM | Print | Comments (0)Contributor Randall Stross has this piece in today’s New York Times about how the Internet is emerging as a megaphone for customer service complaints. It focuses on two incidents that have received widespread attention because disgruntled customers recorded problematic customer service complaints in audio and video and posted them to the web.
The first is the by-now infamous recording of AOL customer Vincent Ferrari trying, with mounting objections from an AOL customer service rep, to cut off his AOL service. (Stross points out that AOL in 2004 and 2005 reached settlements with the FTC and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer on this very problem — customers unable to quit their subscriptions).
The second is the very funny video of a Comcast technician who fell asleep on customer Brian Finkelsteins’s couch while on hold to his offices. The delightful point of the piece is not that these tales are true and amusing but that companies now face widespread repercussions from bad customer service, fallout that is far worse than before the rise of blogs, YouTube and other outlets used for disseminating such damning documentation.
How should Mr. Finkelstein have responded? By writing a letter of complaint to some distant regulatory authority that will require years before it acts? Far more effective means are now at hand. He recorded, then uploaded the video clip with some humorous asides about missed appointments and unfulfilled promises, and got immediate satisfaction in the act of sharing. More than 500,000 viewers have watched Mr. Finkelstein’s video “thank you” note to Comcast.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:03 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Blogs We Read
