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VoIP Services
Best Buy’s new Speakeasy
Last week, Best Buy announced they’d bought Speakeasy (a VoBB and ISP) for $97m. Speakeasy had ~ $80m in revenue, 40000 customers, 300 employees and had raised ~$50m in VC funding. What’s going on here and what does this mean? Best Buy loves the concept of monthly recurring versus the traditional one time shot they […]
Chris Koehncke
Bang bang, we’re all dead
I’m sorry to report that VoIP died on Thursday, March 8th, 2006 at 3:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. This is when reports published that Vonage had lost and Verizon had won their patent infringement suit. Within an hour, my phone began to ring as service providers and VoIP operators called asking the inevitable, "Does this [...]
Chris Koehncke
Where have all the prices gone?
I was at a recent event where one of the "keynote" speakers was excited about the future growth of VoIP services in the small-medium business (SMB) marketplace. I’m not so sure, but if you accept this on face value, let’s take a look at the industry today. Cost of customer acquisition is generally THE key […]
Chris Koehncke
Single Powerpoint Business Case
Stupid phone trick month continues (OK – so it’s turning into Stupid Phone Trick year). Sitofono, an Italian latercomer has emerged with a basic twist on the JaJah service. Namely, you put their little logo on your website and "if" someone clicks it, they can call you for "free" on their telephone or via [...]
Chris Koehncke
Skypecast – which way is up?
I’ve been looking at Skypecasts of late. It’s a new service of Skype which allows effectively anyone to create a public conference bridge. This bridge is listed in the Skype directory and people from around the world can "dial" in and listen and talk. In a Kranky moment, I realized that of the 7 million […]
Chris Koehncke
Fix your cummy VoIP line
One of the most common complaints residential VoIP providers get isabout poor voice quality. There are lots of ways to describe "poor" voice quality, but any description means your phone calls sounds bad toeither you OR the person who called you. In fact, most of the complaints are that the other person can’t hear you [...]
Chris Koehncke