telstra hearing unfriendly voip voices Telstra hearing...

telstra hearing unfriendly voip voices Telstra hearing unfriendly VoIP voices
(Monday, 06 June 2005)

Like many incumbent telecommunications carriers around the world, Telstra has been hearing a growing chorus ofvoices lately. And the voices have been anything but friendly.

Our inside sources tell us that Telstra has been caught completely off guard and has no clear idea of what to do aboutthe coming VoIP revolution. "Telstra's scared about VoIP stealing its voice calls income and it doesn't know what to doabout it," one highly placed source told us recently.

The idea that the nation's biggest voice services provider by a country mile does not have a credible VoIP strategybeggars belief. However, some industry watchers are being reluctantly led to that conclusion.

Recent reports in which Telstra has publicly embarrassed itself by doing a back-flip on its timeline to offer VoIP serviceslends weight to the contention that the carrier is in a state of confusion over the issue. First Telstra releases a statementsaying that its VoIP trial fell short of expectations and therefore it would not offer VoIP services in 2005-06. Then withinthe space of a day Telstra issued a contradictory statement saying that although the VoIP trial fell short of expectations,the carrier "hoped" to launch VoIP services sometime within the 2005-06 financial year. Whichever statement youbelieve, Telstra has not committed itself to definitely being able to offer VoIP within 12 months.

According to one of our insiders, Telstra's VoIP plans have been blown out of the water by the unexpected rapidity withwhich VoIP has caught the imagination of both the business and consumer markets. This has been exacerbated by aninternal culture of denial. "Everybody in Telstra has been indoctrinated with the idea that PSTN is superior to VoIP," oursource said. "However, Telstra did have a five year plan to phase in VoIP and it is at approximately the half-way point.Unfortunately for Telstra, it realises that it should have had a three year plan because VoIP is going to happen right now.

"South Australian ISP Internode is preparing to launch a VoIP service in the next two weeks, listed telco engin is activelyramping up its VoIP service and services from global VoIP provider Skype are now available on portable handsets. Yetour insider tells us that there is no feeling within the carrier that there is a sense of urgency to implement concrete plansfor VoIP. "Telstra's strategy at this point is that PSTN is higher quality. Someone, somewhere within the organisation hasgot to face the problem because sooner or later they are going to be embarrassed into action," our source says.

The problem for Telstra is that no matter what strategy it employs it stands to lose. In all probability, despite its late start,the big carrier will end up winning the leading share of the VoIP market, in much the same way Big Pond leads the ISPmarket. However, the monopoly Telstra had with PSTN, the exorbitant line rental and call charges will soon be a thing ofthe past. That is a lot of easy money to kiss good-bye. For many, however, it will not be a moment too soon.

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