On 10:14:28 21 July 2004 textor wrote:

1. Is the difference because of inherent differences in the Telephone industries

People in this country seem to be inclined to buy "free" mobile phones only to shell out £35-50 a month for voice calls, but would complain that broadband connection is whopping tenner more expensive than dial-up. Totally irrational behaviour, but then again I might just have wrong (or different as I prefer to call them) priorities in life.

Low latency connections are essential, and currently these are only offered by broadband connections, and most people here don't spend that much time in their room (perhaps different in the States?). GRPS in mobile phones is just a no-go latency wise (some might say its intentional).

VOIP will rise its ugly head as soon as first affordable and unlimited low latency 3G internet plans are available - then it will be a matter of people using IP to talk to each other directly rather than paying per minute charges.

Until then... who cares about cost of phone calls so long as people get free trendy phones every 12 months???

regards,

Alex

P.S. Note that I might be biased in my views as I work for a mobile phones retailer (the above are my personal views however)

On 10:50:29 21 July 2004 textor wrote:

Yes, the availability of broadband is obviously an issue., the cost needs to come down. 

I think [b]wireless[/b] broadband accessible from normal mobile phones will be more important. People go about and have mobile with them, given opportunity (cheap calls) they would talk a lot more, however VOIP over mobiles would kill current network operators business model (as well as others who depend on it). Why I think so? Because sitting in front of yer PC in the evening is considered sad by people who like to talk - young generation.

 The potential for VOIP in business, especially when you have a distributed sales force is huge.  The Washington Post article mentions this. 

Personally I'd prefer to see more video conferencing, webcams are cheap enough.

On 13:50:19 21 July 2004 textor wrote:
>However just to clear up a common misunderstanding, an
>Internet phone is just a regular phone, it happens to plug
>into the broadband rather than a telephone plug.

Well, everything soon will be VOIP as BT are upgrading all
their network to IP swtiched one, so all voice traffic will be carried
by IP packets.

For most people VOIP is not technology but price of calls - very cheap. There is no reason why BT selling unlimited (recently limited actually) 512k broadband for £25 a month, while making unlimited voice calls should take less than 10% of line's capacity.

The only reason why they don't do it now is their revenue dependency on plain old voice calls, but as soon as they wire everyone to broadband they will intro what the doctor ordered - voice calls for all 24/7 for affordable monthly fee.

WiFi chips in phones is definately going to happen, well, as soon as they figure
out how to extend battery life!

Alex