[asterisk-biz] FWD moving to $30 annual membership fee

[SIP]

Trixter aka Bret McDanel wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 09:58 -0700, randulo wrote:
>   
>> On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 8:39 AM, Trixter aka Bret McDanel
>> <trixter at 0xdecafbad.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> For those that dont get the bullitins, FWD isnt going to be free
>>> anymore, here is the notice that was sent to me.
>>>       
>> Out of curiosity, are you planning on paying? (I would if I actually
>> used it, but I haven't in several years.)
>>     
>
> I dont use it, and even if I did I would have problems paying for a
> service that is internet only.  Sure they incur cost to maintain the
> registry of who is where and all that, but FWDOut rarely works because
> too many people dont terminate calls off their box, but do try to get
> credits, its a voip only service so I see little value.  The only reason
> as I see it to pay are to either support FreeWorldDialup (no longer
> free) and/or to receive calls from FWD users that cant configure
> something to dial a non FWD address.  
>
> I would instead look for something more like google talk which
> incorporates text and audio, and happens to be free, or whatever.
> Googletalk also bought out grand central and are doing their "beta"
> thing now, those that got in are able to make free phone calls, those
> that didnt have to wait.  I do not know how long it will remain free,
> but this does indicate that google is *finally* going to move towards
> sip (something they have claimed they would do for a long time, but then
> got sued by RTI over LCR patents and they pulled it until that could be
> resolved).
>
> And they are half of what skype is with unlimited in country calling, so
> for many who dont care about protocols but do want to communicate, they
> would probably switch if they have to pay something or move to one of
> the other free non-pstn integrated services.  
>
> I almost think this will be a death nail in the coffin of FWD, I may be
> wrong, but I do not think enough will pay for something they can get
> free from other places, or do free for themselves.
>   

I'm not sure how charging for something that has lasted this long for 
free will necessarily kill it off. After all, if they're not getting 
money from it NOW, then they wouldn't be getting money from it if no one 
paid, either. We'll see, but I think FWD... er... PWD could still be 
around even if not that many people become adopters. One figures a 1-2% 
adoption rate on services that are add-ons to free services or were once 
free and are no longer (2% is a good target, really). With that in mind, 
I vaguely remember some basic user count in the millions at one point, 
but with an active user-base of upwards of 35-40,000. Assuming that the 
active userbase is what you have to work with and we'll go with an upper 
limit of 40,000, that's possibly 800 users who might adopt the pay setup 
(possibly more if it's a single $30 charge per year, which is rather 
minimal if you already have friends/family hooked up on the service).  
That's $24,000/year more than you had before to handle costs such as 
bandwidth, hosting, hardware maintenance, etc (none of which are minimal).

More important questions for ME would be are they still going to allow 
incoming calls into their network from outside? Or will you have to be 
an official FWD peer (which is a pay-per-connection peering network) ?


N.