The folks over at the VoIP Supply blog have asked a rather important question–at least for a service provider such as voip.com–is the VoIP industry growing or shrinking? The numbers show some pretty clear trends:
- Number of landlines are decreasing: The three biggest local exchange carriers–AT&T, Verizon and Qwest—have lost 17.3 million residential telephone lines in 2007.
- Number of subscribers to telephony provided by cable company is rising: The number of net adds as reported by the cable companies over the past two quarters is trending upward.
Of course, voice over IP is not the only thing driving landline defections. Mobile telephony is also on the rise as well. Reports are that as teens are turning into 20-somethings and moving out on their own, getting a landline is just not something they consider anymore. Their mobile phone is their only phone.
So what does all this mean for independent providers like voip.com? It means that one can’t focus on just replacing the conventional landline, but provide service that can be useful anywhere. voip.com does exactly that by providing the following features:
- Softphone: Maybe your mobile phone needs a charge or doesn’t have any signal. A softphone allows you to make a call from your computer to the regular phone network. All of voip.com’s plans includes this feature at no extra cost, or you can purchase it as a standalone feature.
- VoIP calls from any phone: Using the web-based calling features of voip.com–also available with any plan at no extra cost–you can make a call over VoIP using any telephone, even a landline!
- VoIP-enabling your mobile: voip.com offers an add-on service that gives your mobile phone a second telephone number and makes it possible to make cheaper international calls.
And, of course, all of this is available for cheaper than your cable company will charge for the privilege, even at their “temporarily” discounted prices.
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