Any telephone company in Australia that traditionally makes its money by phone line rentals and local and national calls is in big trouble, if figures from the United States are anything to go by. It is reported a company that goes by the name of VONAGE is signing up 60,000 customers per month!
If you think there are many companies in Australia that make money out of this your are dead wrong. There is only one – Telstra.
Over the next year we will see all types of broadband across Australia pumping out at up to ten times the speed of current services and this is where VOIP will come into its own.
VOIP works better with high speed broadband and with plans coming out at over 10 megabytes a second over the next 3-12 months, it will be well worth it.
VOIP or Voice over Internet Protocol refers to the use of the Internet for making telephone calls. The main advantage for users of VoIP connections is that they generally only have to pay their usual (local) Internet connection charges regardless of where they are calling anywhere in the world.
Therfore VoIP telephony threatens the traditional distance and even time-based pricing model upon which all major voice line telephone services are currently based.
In Australia we have been paying absolutely ridiculous charges for line rental and telephone calls both local and International. In the US the major telephone company was broken up over a decade ago and the citizens have been enjoying unlimited national and local calls for fixed prices (around $40AUD per month) for many years. VOIP will make this a reality.
My annual telephone bills once came in at around $12,000AUD per annum. Now taking off my mobile plan would bring it down to $8000.00 per annum.
Since switching to VOIP I will be looking at annual fees of about $2000.00!
If you are a real estate agent and you do not know about VOIP just yet I suggest you do some research.
PhoneChoice.com.au provide information and links to VOIP companies in Australia.Make sure you click on the link to browse plans.
To get the most out of these services I suggest you go onto the highest broadband plan available which is the 1500 – 512. You should pick this up for around $90.00AUD per month.
Most of these services allow you to use your normal handset telephone but you may need a router (about $200) to make sure phone calls take priority of Internet traffic. Your local computer retailer will be able to point you in the right direction.
Believe me it is pretty simple to do.
If I had one wish though it would be for a big national company – one that can bring everything together and market the hell out of it. (PBL – Channel Nine) to get into this in a big way and knock the socks off Telstra.