£20 John Lewis Gift Voucher For Vonage Subscribers – Offer Ends 31-01-12
Vonage VoIP is running a fantastic offer right now, for all Vonage subscribers. The offer begins immediately and runs for a very short time, expiring at midnight on the 31st January 2012. Any new subscriber to Vonage VoIP who subscribes during the offer period and continues to do so for more than 30 days will be entitled to receive a voucher from John Lewis worth £20.
The gift voucher can be spent either on the John Lewis website or in any Waitrose or John Lewis store. All you need to do is sign up to Vonage VoIP and stay signed up, and vouchers will automatically be sent to the billing address of all customers who qualify by the end of March 2012.
- Sign up to Vonage VoIP before 31 January 2012
- Stay a subscriber for more than 30 days
- Receive £20 gift voucher for John Lewis.
- Voucher delivered to billing address by end March 2012
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Vonage VoIP Unveils Full Fledged Alternative To Mobile Phone Plans
Vonage VoIP unveiled some of its future expansion strategies at this week’s Citi Entertainment and Telecommunications Conference.
Vonage VoIP chief executive Mark Lefar highlighted his company’s new mobile applications, which are not yet available to the consumer, but will eventually enable them to make free calls to other Vonage subscribers globally, as well as incorporate its own messaging platform, and calling plans.
Whilst the new product is highly similar to the offering from rival provider Skype, Mr. Lefar said that Vonage’s offering would be priced roughly 30% cheaper than that of its rival. Mr. Lefar also pointed out that Skype was not designed to be a full fledged alternative to mobile carriers, whilst the Voange app for mobile devices seamlessly taps into the smartphone contact list, and offers a much smoother interface.
“Skype is heavily invested in the Skype user name, while Vonage depends on tried-and-true phone numbers.” Mr. Lefar said.
Mr. Lefar added that MagicJack was the only iOS app that did not concern the VoIP provider.
“Our product testing would suggest that it’s nowhere close to same quality that we have, but for folks who are looking for a cheap alternative, but don’t care about 911 services, that are not as concerned about reliability, it’s certainly an alternative.”
According to Mr. Lefar, Vonage VoIP’s offering is a unique all in one communication tool.
Not all of Vonage’s major initiatives have panned out, with Lefar admitting the company spent way to much energy on its Facebook offering.
“There is a certain kind of distance that people want to keep from those individuals and their contacts, and Facebook friends are not the folks that folks want to call on a regular basis via voice. That’s why the bog-standard phone numbers are so important in the mobile apps — make Vonage behave like a regular cell phone and people will use it accordingly.”
Vonage’s new product should keep executives at all the major telcos up at night, since VoIP offerings tend to bypass their revenue model of airtime minutes, replacing it instead with a small volume of data traffic.
“You could be taking over 1,000 minutes a month over VoIP and still be using only a couple of megabytes.So the telecoms don’t even get to replace lost airtime revenues with large 3G or 4G packages — users will get by with a less generous data plan.”
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Vonage Announces The Launch Of New ‘Extensions’ Service
Vonage VoIP has announced the launch of a program it calls Extensions, which enable residential users of the service register a second phone to their Vonage account for no charge, and place outgoing phone calls using that phone.
The second phone could be any telephone including a business phone, with Extensions being designed to accommodate many customers using their mobile phone devices as their second phone. With this in mind Vonage has said that it will quickly introduce iPhone and Android applications.
Vonage describes Extensions as “breaking beyond the four walls of the home” which will make its VoIP service independent of the home telephone, with the company stressing the convenience of Extensions and the fact that users of Vonage World service can make calls to over 60 countries from their mobile device much cheaper than the cost of making the same call using their wireless carrier.
“This new service dramatically increases the value of Vonage’s core offering, providing customers with more flexibility and savings when making international calls,” said CEO Marc Lefar, in a statement.
“We have observed a trend prior to launching Extensions that led us to believe our customers would embrace this,” Tempora continued. “From data we have, we know that more than 50 percent of international calls in the U.S. are made from a mobile phone, so it made sense that our customers would want to do this.”
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Facebook Adds VoIP Video Chat Functionality To Platform
Facebook the dominant online social networking platform is intensifying its competition with Google by offering a free VoIP video chat service similar to Vonage VoIP.
The introduction of the video chat function is designed in large part to fend off the threat from Google which recently incorporated that feature into its social network as an alternative to FaceTime for Apple’s iPhone.
Facebook also unveiled a multi-person chat feature that lets several people hold online conversations at the same time.
“We’re using the best technology that’s out there for doing video chat with the best social infrastructure that’s out there in order to create some really cool new scenarios,” Zuckerberg said during a presentation at the event.
Facebook’s video chat offering makes use of technology from Skype which is Vonage VoIP’s rival, which itself has been the target of an acquisition by Microsoft who agreed to buy the company in May.
“This is a really strategic long term deal between Skype and Facebook,” said Neil Stevens, vice president and general manager for consumer at Skype, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “This isn’t just a one shot one deal implementation of a product. This is a long term relationship.”
Google’s new site, called Google+, includes Google’s maps and images, messages, comments and other content from selected groups of friends, as well as a video chat feature.
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, invested $240 million in Facebook in 2007 and entered an agreement to sell ads on the social network.
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Did Video Kill The Radio Star? Not Quite It Didn’t
Recently there has been intense debate over whether the revenue that incumbent telecoms operators generate from their bread and butter voice services is in terminal decline as innovative VoIP services such as Vonage VoIP have emerged competing head on with the incumbents. Many have been saying for years that the golden days of the telco are over.
Some analysts beg to differ, and make the case that voice still is and will continue to be a prosperous enterprise for operators for a little while longer.
Lack of Net-Neutrality
Earlier in the year The Dutch Parliament signalled its intent to become the first European country to officially legislate net neutrality. This would force internet service providers and operators to treat all types of traffic equally for all services including VoIP applications such as Vonage VoIP.
That was a huge deal for consumers, and was monumental for all Mobile VoIP and IP messaging applications in Holland.
However for net neutrality to become ubiquitous, it will take more than a single country, and all other countries must also adopt a set of similar laws and practice, which is inevitable, but is likely to take a while yet.
Until universal net neutrality becomes a reality, telecom operators legally have the right to block applications on their networks, or charge their subscribers extra for using third party VoIP, such as Vonage VoIP, to offset their revenue loss. Indeed some already levy these additional charges. With others likely to follow suit.
Operators Sell Bundled Services.
Most telcos actually sell their subscription plans as bundles of different services. Which means under a plan you get a defined number of text messages and a defined number of voice minutes, and that type of pricing is highly unlikely to change any time soon. As telcos face ever greater competition on multiple fronts, building an effective sales strategy is a powerful way to protect and enhance their revenues.
Feature Phones Not Dead Yet
It is no great revelation that smartphone sales have grown exponentially, with some estimating that in 2010, they grew by 40%. It is expected that in the year 2014, there will be 1.4 billion smartphone unit sales, and with the current adoption rate Nielsen reckons that smartphones will overtake feature phone sales in the US by the end of this year.
Clearly this trend represents an enormous opportunity for companies such as Vonage VoIP to target customers with mobile applications that are disruptive of existing business models. The market will be large enough for companies such as Vonage VoIP and Skype to take huge chunk out of Voice revenue of incumbent telcos.
However the absolute picture is much more important than the relative one. On a global level, feature phones dwarf smartphones by a factor of 4 to 1. It will be a while before that ratio becomes one which represents an existential threat to incumbents on a global level, though it must be said the ratio varies on a regional and economical developmental level, so the telcos at risk are the ones with the wealthiest customers, and who tend to be the biggest.
For now though, operators have room to breathe, the requirement for conventional voice services will continue unabated for some time yet. But they must start preparing for the new world order that in inevitable in the future, they must learn to embrace the future and not fear it, to not let equity markets and share holders seeking immediate returns drive their planning for a sustainable future, one in which they survive the internet protocol transition.
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As VoIP Phones Get Ever Cooler More People Adopting Them
A new study from research firm IDC suggests that the Japanese are increasingly taking to VoIP services such as Vonage VoIP, and that in particular VoIP phones are gaining popularity in the land of the rising sun.
“the extent to which Japanese customers are putting VoIP phones to work on a day-to-day basis has risen substantially” in recent years IDC said.
During the 2009 and 2010 calendar year IDC says Japanese users of services such as Vonage VoIP found and increasingly varied number of uses for their IP phones, which go beyond simply cutting the price of the call.
“Voice, video and Web conferencing via IP telephony reached a 27.8 percent market penetration, up 8.6 percentage points year-on-year,” according to the report.
The report from IDC found that whilst Japanese investment in VoIP has remained constant, with a marginal increase, the number of features that are being adopted is quite different and rapidly increasing.
According to Telappliant officials, VoIP phones, with wireless handsets often supplied with a charging dock, “could be charged without the need for a direct circuit connection between the handset and the mains.”
Wireless communications analyst Tina Teng was quoted by the Telappliant blog as saying that early mobile phones represent early adoption of technology:
“which aims to resolve the age-old issue of tangled wires trailing from mains sockets. Mobile phones will contribute the largest share of revenue to wireless charging.”
“presence notification, business application collaboration and unified messaging” are on the uptake from 2008.
Presence notification is one of the coolest features of IP phones which lets you indicate to other users when you are at your desk, and works in the same way one would express their availability on an Instant Messaging platform. If you do not want others to know, then simply turn it off.
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Global Fixed Line Market For VoIP Could Generate As Much As $40 billion a year by 2015
VoIP service providers such as Vonage VoIP and Skype now have a combined 120 million subscribers globally, and according to market research firm Point Topic, that growth looks set to remain torrid, and astonishingly accelerate, with the VoIP market predicted to become a US$40 billion market by 2015.
According to Point Topic’s analysis, the growth rate of the global market for VoIP during 2010 was 12.6%, which suggests that there is still plenty of room for further growth.
“The growth of VoIP has been bumpy but shows signs of acceleration,” said John Bosnell, Senior Analyst at Point Topic. “VoIP has all the hallmarks of a classic substitution commodity. This is where customers look at the service that is delivered by a new product and decide that it meets, or exceeds, the service they are currently receiving and when it is appropriately priced they will switch from one to the other.”
Consumers and businesses are switching from traditional telephone services into VoIP service providers such as Vonage VoIP, who offer telecom services and at a very attractive price.
“France has been something of a test bed for VoIP. Driven by an active supplier base that has made VoIP available to a large percentage of the population over the last decade, the providers have been rewarded with significant take-up,” added Bosnell.
The result has been a large scale and rapid shift into VoIP and away from PSTN in France, with nearly 50% of telecom traffic now originating from a VoIP telephone which uses a service like Vonage VoIP .
The scale of the opportunity
The entire broadband market, every existing customer, and every potential customer could ultimately end up substituting traditional PTSN for VoIP service providers such as Vonage VoIP.
“We expect there to be over three quarters of a billion fixed line broadband subscribers by the end of 2015, in theory all of them are targets for VoIP,” said Bosnell.
However all projections about the size and value of the markets should be treated with a degree of caution. At this stage in the cycle there are a number of variables used in models that could easily be inaccurate and could result in projections being off by a significant margin.
An example of this could be the preference for customers to substitute into mobile rather than VoIP and away from fixed line all together.
Bosnell added: “Given a number of assumptions, relatively consistent ARPU, regulatory easement, a cautious set of projections and so on, we expect the global fixed line VoIP market to be generating at least $40 billion a year in five years’ time.”
“It is highly fragmented and generally served by companies who don’t or won’t report regular statistics and revenues. However Skype, the market leader, has had considerable publicity recently and does report some numbers. From these we estimate that there are more internet telephony than VoIP users, with Skype alone accounting for almost 150 million regular callers,” said Bosnell.
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VoIP A Top Ten Thriving Industry Reports The Wall Street Journal
So the economy being in terrible shape is not particularly breaking news, what I did find interesting however is that there are certain areas of the economy which rather than stinking, actually seem to smell quite sweet according to research from IBISWorld USA, which was reported by the Wall Street Journal in a piece they wrote called “The Top Ten Thriving Industries”
What can come as no shock to anyone is that eight of those top ten industries are in technology, with the VoIP industry including service providers such as Vonage VoIP experiencing an eye popping 194 per cent growth in revenue during the decade that started in 2000 and ended in 2010.
The projection for VoIP as an industry and service providers such as Vonage VoIP is rosy, and the industry is expected to grow 17.4 per cent per annum between 2010 to 2016.
So if the VoIP industry and service providers such as Vonage VoIP hitting all the right notes including the top spot as most thriving industry in the economy, the obvious question is whom or what is its analogue, and takes the top spot in a list of the “ Top 10 Dying Industries” compiled once more by IBISWorld and once again reported by the WSJ.
Wired telecom providers top that dubious lists, with many being pushed to extinction in large part by VoIP service providers like
>> Read more
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Services Like Vonage Transform The Consumer Perception Of VoIP
The latest survey by Pew Research suggesting that nearly a quarter of all American internet users make use of VoIP services like Vonage VoIP to make telephone calls has set the blogosphere ablaze.
The figure dramatically increased from the previous year, after Pew reworded its question and asked respondents whether they had used a service such as Skype or Vonage VoIP.
The results of the survey are indicative of a few things regarding what is going on in the world of VoIP. Like other technologies before it, the acronym is now giving way to the big brand names, which is a good thing. VoIP has never been the most pleasant sounding word out there, nor one that is associated with a promising revolutionary technology, more importantly it’s not a word that easily rolls of the tongues of the American public.
Vonage VoIP and Skype have fixed all of that with punchy brand names that easily transform into verbs. The public in America are now forgetting VoIP the technology, which has an unfair reputation for poor quality, an instead are embracing VoIP the service, which they know through brand names such as Vonage VoIP and Skype, that are associated with being inexpensive and cool.
The results of the survey also suggest that VoIP seems to have moved past a difficult stage of its market development, a period where traditional telecom’s companies were more interested in trying to sue Vonage VoIP into an early grave rather than developing their own competing VoIP offerings.
For a long time, during the middle and towards the end of the previous decade, the market for VoIP was over crowded and far too fragmented. Many players who showed promise faded into obscurity or died. Since then the VoIP market has become more integrated, with unified communications on the business front, and has become more mobile overall. In fact, in another few years, we may think of VoIP primarily as a mobile application.
A technology that to begin with faced many issues and was almost eliminated by traditional telecom’s companies has survived its most difficult period and become a successful service.
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Dutch Proposal Mandating Net Neutrality Means Mobile Consumers Can Use Vonage VoIP At No Extra Cost
A new proposal to modify Dutch laws, which would result in mobile phone service providers to charge additional fees to consumers who use VoIP services such as Vonage VoIP or web based instant messaging may deal a large blow to incumbent Royal KPN, which has faced an onslaught because of the growing popularity of such applications.
Maxime Verhagen, the Netherlands economic minister is proposing to change his countries telecommunications law, because whilst the government believes it is perfectly fine for mobile phone and internet service providers to charge higher for faster speeds and bigger data limits, it also feels that additional charges for voice of internet protocol services such as Vonage VoIP are unreasonable.
The ministry says it will examine the existing law and propose changes, which it says will have to be approved by parliament in the following weeks. The proposal should it be adopted means that the Netherlands would be amongst the first countries in the world to statutorily mandate net neutrality.
The changes to telecommunications laws in the fifth largest economy of the Eurozone will have a significant impact on incumbent telco and form state owned monopoly KPN, which is trying to raise its prices at a time when revenue from mobile phone services declined 8.1% during the quarter, a fall which the company blames on the growing use of VoIP services such as Vonage VoIP and Skype, as well as WhatsApp instead of traditional text messages.
KPN controls approximately 49% of the Telecom market in the Netherlands, and in response to falling revenue, says it wants to charge higher prices for VoIP, but not for WhatsApp. The company planned the move after issuing a profit warning in April.
Vodafone, which controls 27% of the market also want to impose additional fees for customers using Vonage VoIP or Skype on their smartphones, whilst T-Mobile owned by German incumbent Deutsche Telekom AG and is the smallest player in the market with 24 per cent market share prohibits its customers altogether from using such services under its terms and conditions.
All three mobile network providers said it was too early to comment on the proposed new law.
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