Mobile phone services have changed radically over the past few years, we’ve gone from analogue to digital, from digital to GPRS and now from GPRS to 3G but through that your trusty landline has stayed, more or less the same. | "If somebody moved from London to Jersey, they could take their number with them" | | Kerry Ritz, CEO Vonage UK |
Yes, we’ve started using it to connect to the internet and yes, we’ve jacked up the speed and used it to connect to broadband, but in terms of making calls, it’s been the same for years. That is starting to change with the increasing popularity and speed of broadband. More people are turning to VOIP (Voice over IP) services like Skype to make cheap or even free calls to friends outside of the island. VOIP Services There are two main types of VOIP services. 1) The first is the ones like Skype that rely on you having a computer (although some standalone WiFi handsets are now available) and use peer2peer technology.
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This basically means that instead of going through a central point it connects directly to another computer, or through a computer and out to an ordinary phone number. With these services you normally buy pre-pay credit that is then used to cover the cost of calls to ordinary phone lines. 2) The other type of service, like Vonage, goes through a central point and routes your call on to the other person. These services normally charge you a monthly fee but often give you unlimited free local/national calls, and they don’t require a computer as they provide you with a conversion box for your ordinary phone. Alternatives A number of VOIP companies have started to emerge, offering a telecom service that doesn’t require a computer, just a broadband connection and offers call quality equal to your normal phone-line, or at least that’s what their marketing says.
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One of the biggest VOIP companies is Vonage with customers around the world, including Jersey. Vonage works by providing you with a box that plugs into your broadband network and then you just plug your phone into the box. Instead of making calls through the ordinary telephone system and being billed for the call by Jersey Telecom your call is sent over the internet to the VOIP centre and routed out to the person you’re calling. This is a much cheaper way of managing calls and because of that a number of traditional Telco’s are looking at moving to that model. The other thing that VOIP allows is a phone number from anywhere in the world. Kerry Ritz, CEO of Vonage UK told us why this was an advantage, telling us “you are no longer tied to the number the telephone company says you have to have”. He went on to say that “if somebody moved from London to Jersey, they could take their number with them”, he goes on to say how this would allow people to make calls to people in the UK and in Jersey for the same rate. What a VOIP phone also allows you to do is take your phone and VOIP box with you when you go on holiday, plug it into a broadband connection in your hotel, and use that phone to call people back home as if you where still at home yourself – so no more long distance call charges.
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This does however raise a number of regulatory issues, potentially the voip company can operate from anywhere in the world and still provide you with a phone service, despite being outside the control of the JCRA. There are also a number of technical issues surrounding VOIP, in that it isn’t a proven technology and it relies on a broadband network that could go down. If you had VOIP as your sole phone service and the broadband network went down you wouldn’t be able to call emergency services. These are all problems that should be solved as the technology evolves, and as telcos upgrade their networks from Copper to Fibre and from ordinary phone network to IP network. The other main issue right now is the fact that you have to pay your Telco for line-rental, again for an ADSL line and then you’d have to pay the VOIP company either a monthly fee for unlimited calls or per call. In the USA a number of small telecom companies have started offering what’s being called Naked DSL, giving customers the chance to just pay a monthly fee for an ADSL line and no phone number. This allows the customer to decide whether to go for the VOIP service offered by the Telco or another company. Jersey Telecom
We spoke to Jersey Telecom about a Naked DSL service and they told us that they are aware of ‘Voice Over IP’ and Naked DSL but don’t have any current plans to launch a service. However they did say that as the technology develops and becomes more usable they will be ready for any changes that might happen in the sector. Jersey Telecom also told us that they are working on plans to convert the entire island phone network to an IP network, thus turning all calls into VOIP calls and making it easier for other services to operate on the network. How about you? Would you use a ‘Voice over IP’ service? Have you already used one and if you have what are your thoughts on its reliability, sound quality and usability? Do you think that this is a step to far and that consumers don’t need this much choice? Would you prefer to see a lower cap on existing calls and leave things as they are? | 
