June 7th, 2007
New Zealand VoIP providers team up with state-owned wireless for rural VoIP push
According to the New Zealand Herald’s Peter Griffin, VoIP providers WorldxChange and BayCity Communications are planning a big push to get VoIP services out to rural areas over the Extend wireless network of state-owned broadcaster Kordia.
Kordia’s Geoff Hunt tells Peter there are only 2,000 customers on the network but there’s room for ten times as many.
Noting that farmers tend to be cautious, conservative spenders even in times of economic plenty, Peter seems to think that the fact that WorldxChange VoIP would be delivered over broadband connections rather than through a dedicated channel would make New Zealand farmers less, uh, sheepish (ba boom ba bing) about trying the service.
Peter notes that WorldxChange’s Paul Clarkin says there have been dozens of people successfully using it for months as part of a trial.
“The problem is that new users are still faced with that big upfront cost ($800) of installing the equipment that connects their house or business wirelessly to the Kordia transmission tower,” Peter writes. “That is still a significant barrier to uptake. But now that customers can actually ditch their $40 a month Telecom phone line the economics of the service work out better for everyone concerned. “
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
