AOL Announces New VoIP Offering (That Probably Didn't Cost $4.1 Billion)
from the voip-hype dept
AOL has announced its consumer VoIP offering: which comes off sounding like a cross between Skype and Vonage. They've beefed up the VoIP capabilities of AIM, and inegrated the IM client with a broadband phone service that -- unlike SkypeOut -- doesn't force subscribers to make all their calls through a PC. While Skype makes PC-to-PC calls easy, SkypeOut doesn't easily integrate with the home phone people are used to using. AOL's figured all this out without dropping $4 billion, and has a much clearer plan than Skype to actually make money. If eBay wants to turn Skype into a phone company, it's unclear why they needed to drop so much cash. If they plan to just use it to add voice service to their auctions, it's, um, unclear why they needed to drop so much cash. Of course, at the same time, it's still not clear why AOL appears to be launching a product that competes with their sister company, Time Warner Cable, who already offers a popular VoIP offering. Why not have the two work together?
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Maybe to see which one would be a better plan.
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Or maybe because they're well aware that AOL is about ready to be tossed on its ass unless it can show some serious contributions to Time-Warner.
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Actually AOL throws a lot into Time Warner's coffers - it's a classic cash cow.
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Time Warner's VOIP is tied to their cable division, and is very different. You use your old phones and wiring and can't take your phone and use your VOIP on trips like you can with VOnage. AOL's plan is similar to Vonage's.
So it wouldn't have made sense to tie the two together. Besides if AOL gets sold, they would need to sell the new service along with AOL.
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