Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Truphone on iPhone: call setup time too long?

Take a look at the Truphone on iPhone video on Andy Abramson log: do you consider 20" call setup a reasonable waiting time?

I do not. Most of you do not. And the poor man's thought is: "Truphone is no good, I want to call and instantly be connected, this does not happen with traditional telephony! Truphone service is bad".
But the truth is that Truphone is not the real culprit. Its only fault is that it relies upon a VoIP wholesale carrier, whose service is usually offered as "best effort".
Therefore there is no guarantee, no performance metrics, no quality figures: no way to assess the overall quality of phone calls.

As Luca already stated, VoIP service providers are subject to slavery by wholesale carriers.

On a Porterian point of view, the VoIP market was born in danger due to
  • the high rivalry from other competitors,
  • the lack of customer lock in (except for Skype, standard SIP means no lock in),
  • the easeness of new player entrance.
Now, the VoIP market situation is aggravated by the enormous power of suppliers, which can decide the destiny of a service by simply providing (or not providing) a sufficient quality of phone termination.

Trying to explain your customers that the fault is on your service provider is not wise: on the contrary, giving such an excuse yields the customer the impression that you are just a cockdodger.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,