The coming VoIP insta-pricewar
A service provider I had mostly shelved for my VoIP experiments must have noticed that it was getting shelved a lot. Figures - that's what happens when your rates are higher than your competition, and you don't offer any other features... you stop getting business.
However, these folks have innovated, and come back with an interesting solution. They've published an API (and included example scripts to drop-in to off-the-shelf open source tools, in this case, Asterisk) that let you query their prices on a per-call basis. This, plus a new set of rates that are much cheaper in at least some cases, put them back on my radar.
I had to stop and think about the implications, though - they're impressive. Of course, it's only a matter of time until other providers start offering a similar instant price lookup service. Then, we'll really have an instant pricing market for VoIP services.... not getting enough traffic on the day? Well, drop your rates another fraction of a percent - thus getting more calls from more customers, but slightly eroding your profit margin. Continue this until whoever has the volume leverage beats out the little guys. Meanwhile, collect marketing stats as to which calling destinations you should be negotiating better rates for, given the query stream.
This makes for a lovely downward spiral - perfect market efficiency, on the spot market for VoIP call termination services. At least, until someone finally innovates, creating a new type of service, and shuts off the downward spiral. Here's hoping. I've mostly stopped with my aggressive VoIP experimenting, because, as a consumer, there aren't a lot of new building blocks with which to build new things. Right now, it's all just telephony replacement, and, well, I've replaced my telephone services with cheaper VoIP ones.
In case anyone wants to play with the current leader in VoIP rate erosion - check out VoicePulse connect.
Technorati Tags: voip