As many as 30 percent of homes in the US and Britain could subscribe to Internet-based phone services in the next three years if major telecommunications companies offer services similar in price and quality to traditional phone connections, according to a new survey by Mercer Management Consulting.
The findings, based on a poll of 1,000 consumers in the two countries that was to be released yesterday, suggest that the market for low-priced Internet phone services will most likely be dominated by phone companies like AT&T and cable providers, and possibly local phone carriers, but not the new entrants that control much of the Internet market now.
"The companies with existing relationships with consumers have huge advantages," said Martin Kon, a consultant at Mercer and the author of the survey. "It's an uphill battle for the upstarts with no customer base."
While Internet calling, which sends voice calls as data packets over the Internet, is considerably cheaper than traditional calling, most consumers will not switch solely because of price, Kon said.
Reception and service, he noted, would have to be comparable to what conventional connections offer.
"People won't accept lower quality," Kon said. "I don't think Vonage or Skype," two young ventures that offer Internet calling, "will eat their lunch."
"Love them or hate them," he said, "the local phone companies are perceived as having better quality."
With nearly 200,000 subscribers, Vonage, which is based in Edison, New Jersey, is the market leader for Internet calling services by a wide margin. But its share of the market has started to slip since AT&T introduced its Internet phone service, called CallVantage, in March.
Cable companies including Cablevision, Time Warner Cable and Cox have also entered the Internet phone market, and other telecommunications companies are preparing services as well. Vonage has worked to shake the perception that its service is only for technophiles and is unreliable and difficult to use.
Consumers can use the service without having to install software on computers or buying special phones. The company sells the adaptors needed to access its service in 5,000 retail outlets.
According to IDC, a market research firm, nearly 600,000 consumers in the US are expected to subscribe to Internet calling services by the end of the year.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS