August 26, 2005

Internet Resources

Korky Koroluk

VoIP market being scooped

When I first wrote about Voice over the Internet protocol (VoIP) a little more than three months ago, the CRTC had just issued its ruling which, in effect, placed some shackles on the traditional phone companies while giving virtual free reign to those who would compete with them.

Some of those new competitors have been busy — notably Vonage Canada, whose ads seem to be everywhere. A friend with a friend inside Vonage tells me that the results have been better than anyone at the company had dared hope.

VoIP is a system for using your broadband Internet connection for your phone calls instead of the traditional telephone networks, so having a broadband connection is an obvious prerequisite.

Vonage had already been selling in Canada when the CRTC ruling was issued, but the effort had been pretty low key. But the company had a full-fledge service and marketing plan ready to go, and launched it within days of the ruling.

There are other outfits — either Canadian, or Canadian subsidiaries of American firms — that have jumped into the VoIP market. Among them are Digital Voice, One Connect and Ravon.

Although each operates in a similar fashion, each has different sets of features, and there are different ways of handling calls to 911 emergency services. You’ll have to shop around.

Vonage’s Web site offers the most complete information and the widest range of calling plans. Based on their information, there is no doubt that you’ll save money with VoIP no matter which of their half-dozen plans you buy. Some offer unlimited long-distance within Canada and the United States; other plans have time limits.

While all companies offer you the chance to keep your existing phone number, Vonage offers that option to more areas than the others.

What’s disappointing in all this is the lack of real action by Bell Canada or Rogers Cable. Both seem to be standing back while the new kids on the block scoop up the early VoIP customers.

Bell’s Web site offers very little information on VoIP, so little as to be worthless. Rogers recently bought Sprint Canada, so you know they’re interested at some level in telephone service. But we’re still waiting for a big VoIP launch.

While the big outfits dither, the smaller specialist firms are carving out market share. I know some construction firms have already made the jump and are saving money in the process. It’s not a lot every month, perhaps, but over a year it adds up. For anyone with operations offshore, some of the VoIP specialist firms offer special calling plans to Asia or Europe.

I have several friends in France, and we call one another often. The Vonage rate for those calls is only four cents a minute, which has got me thinking.

If you want more information, go on the Web. Vonage: www.vonage.ca; Digital Voice: www.digitalvoice.ca; One Connect: www.oneconnect.ca; Ravon: www.ravon.ca

Several weeks ago I mentioned “those little flash memory sticks you sometimes see dangling from people’s key chains.”

That drew a call from a reader who had never encountered these little devices that many use for transferring files. He wanted to know more.

They are simply little drives that plug into a USB port on your computer. You drag and drop files into one, then take it home with you. Plug it into a USB port on your home computer and the work you brought home is waiting for you.

There are many such devices, and they can start as low as about $25 for 32 MB of memory, and go up from there, all the way to 4GB and beyond. Of course, the price climbs along with the drive’s capacity. Take at look in any store selling consumer electronics.

Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@dailycommercialnews.com

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