The Truth About VoIP

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The Truth About VoIP [Copy link]

Is low voice rate really the core competitiveness of VoIP? It seems so.

If the skin is gone, where will the hair be attached?

A very interesting scene happened at the 2006 China VoIP Development Forum held recently. China Unicom Beijing Branch was the only traditional operator exhibiting at the venue. When the reporter approached, he found that what Unicom recommended to visitors at the venue was a certain CDMA wireless network card, which had nothing to do with the theme of the VoIP conference. In this forum with VoIP as the theme, Unicom was also the only company promoting products not related to VoIP.

As an emerging VoIP operator, China Broadband Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. placed its corporate booth in the most conspicuous position at the entrance of the venue, and sent a special person to introduce its business platform outside the booth. People came to pay attention to it in an

endless stream. For the emerging business of VoIP, traditional operators and emerging operators have shown different attitudes. The reason is that the low-cost voice service of VoIP will have a huge impact on the traditional voice service. Among them, the emerging operators are the vested interests, while the traditional operators are the ones who are impacted and their future is uncertain.

Based on this, Zhang Yanbin, a researcher at the Institute of Communication and Information of the China Academy of Telecommunications, put forward the following view at the forum: the core competitiveness generated by the low tariff of VoIP is an illusion. Without the due benefits, no one will invest in building the network. If the network construction cannot keep up, VoIP cannot develop. The only thing that can promote the healthy development of VoIP is its data service, because only in this way can the interests of all parties be truly balanced.

Cheapness is not born.

Calling from China to the United States is 0.3 yuan per minute; calling to Singapore is 0.148 yuan per minute... If you use a VoIP phone, which was extremely expensive in the past, it may be cheaper than calling a local call. It is obvious that it is attractive to users.

However, things are not always born this way. What is the basis for VoIP to be cheap? Whose "cheese" is touched behind the cheapness?

VoIP operators are not responsible for network problems, but rely entirely on the Internet. The reason why VoIP is low-cost is that the cost of investing in network utilization is low. It is precisely based on this point that the profits between fixed-line operators who invest in the network and VoIP operators are uneven.

Therefore, for traditional fixed-line operators, the low cost of VoIP is not reasonable. The most important reason for this problem is the unreasonable business model of the Internet network. The birth of the Internet is not for commercial purposes, but when it expands to a certain scale and its open characteristics affect the business field (such as voice-VoIP, television-IPTV, etc.), it is necessary to consider the issue of shaping a reasonable business model.

VoIP is waiting for NGN

. According to foreign media reports, Skype, an Internet phone service provider, recently stated that the company's registered users have now exceeded 100 million; at the same time, according to statistics from the Ministry of Information Industry, China's IP call duration in 2005 reached 135.26 billion minutes, an increase of 124.4% compared with 60.27 billion minutes in 2004.

The market is developing rapidly, but the industrial policy of VoIP has not been further clarified for a long time. Only by constructing a reasonable Internet industrial chain can the development problem of VoIP be fundamentally solved. At present, operators are actively deploying NGN, and the fundamental purpose of NGN is to make the Internet manageable and profitable.

Zhang Yanbin believes that when voice services are no longer the focus of telecommunications revenue, the IT industry and the telecommunications industry have achieved reasonable integration, and information services have become truly larger and stronger, the interests of all parties can be finally balanced; traditional operators can only control a part of VoIP data services after transforming into comprehensive information service providers. "Before this, the policy will not be open to VoIP."

He also pointed out that the final development direction of VoIP, from a business perspective, will definitely be bundled with other data services and become part of comprehensive information services. Among them, home informatization and enterprise informatization are markets that operators must pay attention to.

Refusing or not is reasonable

"Sorry, we don't provide VoIP services at present."

Recently, when reporters called the customer service departments of China Unicom, China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Tietong, they basically got the same answer. Among them, China Telecom's answer was a bit special: we have this service, but it has not been opened.

Only China Netcom explicitly answered that it has launched VoIP services. Moreover, it has not refused to open this emerging service to individual users. However, when the reporter called the VoIP customer service number provided by it, it was another emerging VoIP operator that provided services to the reporter. They introduced that they are a partner of Netcom and are actually a real service provider by borrowing Netcom's brand.

According to insiders, although several other traditional operators have not publicly deployed VoIP voice services, they have also tried in some other regions. Since they are unwilling to give up this business, why are they so half-hearted?

First of all, the policy has not been further clarified. Allowing cheap VoIP voice services is equivalent to giving up traditional voice services. So far, the proportion of domestic operators' revenue from data services is less than 40%, and voice services are still the main source of income. As a network operator, telecom companies must obtain a certain amount of income to maintain the construction of data networks in order for VoIP to survive.

Why should they accept it?

"The reason is very simple. They don't want to give up, but they also don't want others to develop VoIP voice services, so they only openly boycott other competitors that threaten their own interests." Shen Zixin, a senior analyst at Shuiqingmuhua, pointed out in an interview with reporters.



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