Very interesting article posted here: Tech Beat: Technology Blog on BusinessWeek Online
This article which is titled "No Wonder AT&T is About to Fold Em'" really hit the nail on the head with so many points, especially pointing out that we shouldn't wait for a mass migration to VoIP before considering VoIP a success or making a dent in plain old telephone service. The article critiques VoIP critics and naysayers by pointing to successes in VoIP, which reminded me of my recent Galitzine vs. Dvorak blog entry where both I and Greg Galitzine critiqued John Dvorak's "poor" analysis of the VoIP industry. Some people still just don't get it. Even with the Vonage commercials playing non-stop on mainstream TV channels and with the ingenious (annoying?) Vonage theme song "doot doot doot doot doo..." playing relentlessly in my head -- even this marketing genius still hasn't opened the eyes of many VoIP naysayers.
Some interesting quotes from the BusinessWeek article:
"I've just started using Skype, the free Internet telephony software. All I can say to telecom execs is: Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. ... "
"You're not going to get a mass migration to VOIP until such time as the service becomes the equivalent of what you have today," one analyst said in this story. "You have to offer people more than they can do today."
"Not really. The big mistake many people make with new technologies, from personal computers to the World Wide Web and, most likely, VOIP, is to compare them with existing ways of doing things, and then--big surprise!--they don't measure up."
and most interesting of all..
"Let the so-called experts argue over how many years away the tipping point is. I and 22 million other people already know it's here."
I parsed a good portion of the article, but it's still a great read, so go check it out: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/00000027.htm
