IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings

Could not pass this up after reading the following on Yahoo news.

Seems to good to be true, paying $99.00 for a RAZR and getting a $100.00 rebate. What they are not saying is the RAZR is no longer a phone but a marketing tool that att will use to get more monthly revenue from you.

Applications – games, picture transfer, music ID, downloading songs and even more on the horizon using location based services. Although your price per minute will decrease, a good percentage of the user base will subscribe to higher priced (higher margin) applications.

I just upgraded to a RAZR on Verizon’s network and quickly learned that it is a marketing tool, let me explain … the first thing everyone does when they get a new phone is learn how to do the basics: silent mode, address book searching, hot key dialing, and mute.

Wait a minute, the user manual doesn’t explain how to mute the phone, what it does explain is how to use those applications I mentioned above. I even went to the Verizon store , waited almost an hour to speak to an expert, and he couldn’t tell me how to mute the phone, howver he did tell me how to use those nifty applications.

Finally I called Motorola and they walked me thru the mute function.

And now to my point, the mobile operators finally figured it out , give control to your (large) user base , reap the financial rewards.

Hmmm , sounds like a replay of the CATV playbook, and ask yourself this question , "How has my CATV monthly bill fared as compared to my telco bill?", my answer is "My CATV bill has gone from $45.00 a month to $135.00, while my telco bill has gone from $65.00 a month to Vonage's rate of $24.99".