I think it is amazing how little strategy and disruption there seems to be in the industry.
My dad is mostly retired, he rents out his office, but his secretary still comes into the office one afternoon a week. I didn't want to stress her out by asking her to learn new technology, but the phone was used only an hour or two a month. I ported the same number he'd had for a few decades to Google Voice, and attached an ObiHai box so that she can use a regular phone, rather than needing to understand why messages are in Google Voice but outgoing calls are placed using Google Chat, or use a special earpiece plugged into the computer.
Anyway, over the two years that it worked it saved a couple thousand dollars that would have been spent to use the phone for about 30 hours. Since Google Voice will no longer be compatible with ObiHai devices this month (moving away from XMPP), I ported the number to Anveo, which is no longer free, but still only $40/year.
Both Microsoft and Google should offer small businesses packaged services where you bring your own internet service, then buy telephone plus email using your own domain name from them for a flat fee. Something like $200-400/year for 1-3 users would find an enormous market. Afterwards, they could sell office suites, billing/accounting software, scheduling software as add-ons.
Right now it is needlessly complicated for people who have minimal communication needs, and don't care about technology, to avoid huge costs. It's kind of absurd to consider how little service someone like a barber or a shop owner gets after paying fees that make up a significant part of their operating costs.
Yeah, it wouldn't work with free, since even their (whatever) -> client is 1/4 c/ minute.
My concern isn't really about the money, though the free calls through voice are nice. It's that Google voice has my number now (as a gizmo refugee), and that + a voip provider + cell provider could be condensed down to twilio on the desktop and wifi, and maybe cell data on a tablet, or prepaid cell as a backup.
The $1/month for a number isn't bad, international sms is awesome for my use case.
Yeah, I could never justify a service like this for $100/yr. It's cool, but it's also free to get a local google voice number that forwards to the cell and just press 9.
I was an Ooma early adopter and am still grandfathered into their initial "all calls free" program. I enjoy the call quality as much as how much I haven't had to pay for phone calls over the 11+ years.
Note, I'm not including internet costs because I'd be getting that anyway.
Wildfire was doing much of this twenty years ago.[1][2] Listen to their demo. That system was way ahead of its time. It was quite popular, but compute intensive enough that the service was expensive. At its peak, Wildfire was a standard offering on Orange cellular service in the UK, but they dropped it in 2005. Somewhere in the 2000s, Microsoft bought the technology and trashed the product, although Cortana is to some extent a successor. Now a small startup has the original technology, and offers it, at an excessive price.
One key to doing this is that the system must consistently respond to the user in about 200-300ms. Long delays, as with Google voice dialing, are unacceptable. That was why it was so expensive in the 1990s; the company had to provision a lot of server capacity per user. Today, it ought to be much cheaper.
$49 a month reflects what Wildfire cost in the 1990s. Today, it should cost about $2/month.
It would be certainly nice if Google did offer some sort of direct calling program, instead of connecting two landlines. I was wondering as well how long Google could offer such a service for free, does anyone know what sort of costs go into a business like this?
I like this a lot. Let's be honest, there's not a lot of services built that are geared towards a small customer demographic of limited means. Which is what this service is geared towards. Those with huge expense accounts don't care about paying ridiculous rates for roaming charges. These types of services seem geared towards people who don't have that luxury and are in a location that doesn't have an internet connection of sufficient quality for skype. This is a demographic that I belong to for quite a few months of the year. ++ from me.
If this tech turns out to be too expensive (for normal people) we could still use it on a pay-per-use basis, like with a "video conferencing booth". You'd schedule your call and reserve a local booth for both participants through an app. And most companies should be able to afford having one of these in the office.
Phone costs aren't really something I pay my mind to anymore, has become such a small position. For me these tools are for direct communication with direct contacts.
Wouldn't want call centers contacting me through such a service, so I compartmentalize my usage with classical telephone services.
> For my use case?
Skype is fine for that, but I think Microsoft will discontinue it at some point.
Yep, if you talk another 100 minutes, you pay $40 that month instead of $30. I combine it with having gvoice ring my landline when I'm at home, and the landline is $3/mo unlimited voip via an Ooma box.
My dad is mostly retired, he rents out his office, but his secretary still comes into the office one afternoon a week. I didn't want to stress her out by asking her to learn new technology, but the phone was used only an hour or two a month. I ported the same number he'd had for a few decades to Google Voice, and attached an ObiHai box so that she can use a regular phone, rather than needing to understand why messages are in Google Voice but outgoing calls are placed using Google Chat, or use a special earpiece plugged into the computer.
Anyway, over the two years that it worked it saved a couple thousand dollars that would have been spent to use the phone for about 30 hours. Since Google Voice will no longer be compatible with ObiHai devices this month (moving away from XMPP), I ported the number to Anveo, which is no longer free, but still only $40/year.
Both Microsoft and Google should offer small businesses packaged services where you bring your own internet service, then buy telephone plus email using your own domain name from them for a flat fee. Something like $200-400/year for 1-3 users would find an enormous market. Afterwards, they could sell office suites, billing/accounting software, scheduling software as add-ons.
Right now it is needlessly complicated for people who have minimal communication needs, and don't care about technology, to avoid huge costs. It's kind of absurd to consider how little service someone like a barber or a shop owner gets after paying fees that make up a significant part of their operating costs.
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