Thursday, August 31, 2006

AOL's Exit From VoIP - Good News or Bad News?

I've been out all day, and have seen a lot of buzz around AOL's decision to drop its Total Talk service later this year.

I really liked Andy Abramson's take on the news, and his post has a lot of insight as to why this is actually a positive step along the way for VoIP to mature from a Voice 1.0 to a Voice 2.0 application.

AOL came to market last April, but VoIP has come a long way since then, and it's an uphill battle trying to make money with traditional POTS replacement service - as the pureplays know all too well. As Andy notes, the more recent PhoneLine offering from AIM is more in line with the future of voice, and is probably a better vehicle for AOL to retain its subscriber base and hopefully return to growth.


Technorati tags: , , ,

No comments: