Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP technology, is poised to shape the future of the telecom industry. While VoIP was originally meant to be used only by a few business owners who did not want to make expensive person-to-person calls or provide their personal cell phone number to clients, it’s become a common technology that has a number of uses.
Mobile VoIP Use
The introduction and subsequent mass use of smartphones years ago had an unintended consequence: the proliferation of mobile VoIP. Up until smartphone use became commonplace, people used phones mainly to talk and/or to text. With the ability to connect to the Internet and send and receive videos, smartphones changed the way mobile technology works. Mobile users became increasingly interested in doing things like video chatting over their phones; users found this was an effective way to keep in touch with friends and family in other cities, provinces, and countries.
What does this mean for the telecom industry? Among other things, the industry has had to change its mobile strategy. Telecom providers are becoming more aware that the “phone” features of mobile phones are less important to users than other features–including VoIP. Users are more likely to video chat or otherwise connect to friends and family using Internet technology than to make phone calls. Thus, the telecom industry can no longer afford to concentrate its efforts on selling phone plans. Instead, data plans and the ability to communicate over VoIP are becoming paramount in product development and sales efforts.
Dedicated Minutes Plans
One of the more important shifts that telecom providers must make is from offering limited phone minutes to offering dedicated data transfer minutes. Plans that include unlimited data or large limits on data transfer minutes will become increasingly popular as users rely more and more on using VoIP to make calls. Users are not going to want to pay extra for phone minutes that they do not use, especially if the plan doesn’t include a large amount of data transfer time.
The other option, of course, is to pay monthly to use Skype or similar services to connect to landlines or cell phones using VoIP. Telecom providers will need to offer appropriate data transfer packages in order to compete with this type of service.
Use VoIP
GoneVoIP, as one of the VoIP voices in Canada and a market leader, has long embraced the shift to VoIP, offering countless Digital Home Phone comparisons along with integrated users reviews of services that run on this technology. Staying connected has never been so easy, inexpensive and enjoyable.