AOL Announces New VoIP Offering (That Probably Didn't Cost $4.1 Billion)

from the voip-hype dept

Tue, Sep 20th 2005 2:20pm — Carlo Longino

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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4 Comments

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J Surdilla, 20 Sep 2005 @ 3:17pm

No Subject Given
Maybe to see which one would be a better plan.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Sep 2005 @ 4:20pm

Re: No Subject Given
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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Anonymous Coward, 20 Sep 2005 @ 6:23pm

Re: No Subject Given
Actually AOL throws a lot into Time Warner's coffers - it's a classic cash cow.
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Greg Andrew, 21 Sep 2005 @ 9:08am

No Subject Given
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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