VoIP needs Market Education
Sometimes people wonder why PhoneGnome offers a solution for people that want to (or need to) keep a landline. It seems so last century. Why not just go fully VoIP as a substitute and get rid of the landline?
Forgetting for a moment the simple fact that one must have broadband to get a “substitute VoIP” service (a la Vonage, Sun Rocket etc.) and half the people with broadband have DSL where they must maintain the landline in order to have their DSL, a couple of stories have come out within the past week that provide some additional support for our position.
This PC World story, posted today (to appear in the August 2006 issue of PC World magazine) Web Phone Woes speaks to one of the dirty little secrets of the “ordinary VoIP” industry, that of losing your telephone number and perhaps never being able to get it back:
“Stodghill never received working phone service, and she lost the family’s phone number of three years while trying to transfer it from BellSouth, her landline carrier, to 8×8.”
“In the end, she demanded her old telephone number back and a refund. She was told that her phone number could not be returned, and she is still waiting to receive the refund.”
Another customer perhaps summed it up best:
“I saw the [VoIP] ads and thought this was the answer. Apparently, I’ve got a lot to learn.”
Another story appeared this past Sunday about cellular 911 and how it has become almost useless in California and in the San Francisco bay area in particular, due to the routing of those calls and 911 callers being put on hold for longer than the duration of the actual incident being reported. A story from earlier this year noted that nearly 4 of every 10 cell 911 calls are not answered and this is caused in a large part by the fact that the cellular 911 system is jammed with non-emergency calls, making wireless a poor choice as a reliable substitute for landline 911, especially if there are kids in the household.
These are just some of the reasons that people are keeping a basic landline and adding PhoneGnome to save money and get new Internet-enabled capabilities — it makes sense for a lot of people. Add the new, without throwing out all the benefits of the old. Oh yeah, and without this risk of losing your number forever.
