[Asterisk-biz] VoIP Future and Asterisk -- For Teliax, LiveVOIP, NuFone, VoipJet, BroadVoice and all other IXPs

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Kenneth Shaw wrote:

> Your competition is Skype, Vonage, VoicePulse, CallVantage, CallWing,
> etc. -- not each other. I really want to see Asterisk grow as a
> communications platform, and that will not happen if the small
> commercial enterprises that support it die because they cannot compete
> on the same scale that the big dogs do.
No, not really. They aren't my competitors. They may be competitors of my 
customers. But that's their problem, not mine. 

My competitors (and strangely enough, vendors) are traditional carriers,
like XO, Broadwing, Qwest, etc. 

> Jeremy, David, Mike, Mark, and all the others, band together. All of you
> currently resell the same companies, and use the same software:
> Asterisk. I assure you that Vonage will be bought up by one of the
> failed VoIP arms of the AT&Ts, Verizons and Cingulars of the world, but
> only after Vonage buys out VoicePulse. And if you think the industry is
> too competitive now, just wait until Netscape, er, I mean Google,
> launches their Communicator product in early 2007, and Microsoft and
> Yahoo start offering similar services.
Yes, time to face the music, we are VARs for big boys. 

I think you are somewhat confused if you think that residential VoIP is 
competition to what people here are doing. There's no benefit of using 
asterisk if all you are doing is reselling minutes. It is far more 
interesting when you resell advanced services, not simply termination and 
origination. 

> Realize that Vonage, Mr. Pulver's gig, started out as a concept for a
> telecom minute auction. A minute exchange! But back then, the technology
> wasn't available (or was too expensive) to pull it off, and so was a
> failed business concept.
> 
> Become the NYSE of telecom, and make it open so that any company or
> individual can directly buy or sell minutes on your network. That's what
> people, consumers and businesses, really want.
Welcome to arbinet and 1999.

-alex