VoIP vs Telephone

The increasing popularity of mobile VoIP is certainly having an impact on telco revenue. According to an August 2012 study by research firm Analysys Mason, 20 percent of smartphone owners used a VoIP application at least once during a two-month observation period for the study. In fact, some smartphone users are beginning to use VoIP apps as their primary voice service. The study found that 4 percent of smartphone users spent more time using VoIP apps than they did making ‘traditional’ voice calls. Changing expectations among consumers and businesses are also eating away at telcos’ profits. It’s worth bearing in mind that there are still a billion people in the world who have never made a telephone call so telephony is still growing. I don’t think we’ll see the death of the telephone but I think telephony will take a reduced role in overall communication. What are your thoughts about the direction that the telephone companies are going?

Voice Menus

It seems like no matter where you call, you will get a machine which lets you talk through the menus, never a real person. This is especially true for huge companies that get a massive volume of calls that want to make it more efficient. To some degree the call forwarding might be a great thing and extremely efficient but there have to still be people on the other end of the line to make it worthwhile. I am sure that we have all dealt with the these types of machines and answering services. They breed frustration if all you ever end up getting is voicemail. Do you ever wonder what that says about cooperation and humanity in general? Sometimes it seems like we are going overboard by thinking that automated things solve our issues and problems. What happened to the human element?