Free calls on Google is an opportunity for the telcos

Posted on August 30, 2010 / 3 Comments

A month or so back, I wrote the following

Voice calls will be “free” in the future. The quotation marks signify that nothing is really free. In the natural evolution of the industry, there will come a time when customers will pay for connectivity in various forms, either by data volumes or time. Voice will simply be one among many applications they can use as part of this connectivity bundle.

I didn’t think the future would come so soon.

So I was asked by a reporter what I thought about (a) the impact of the Google offer of free calls on the telecom operators and (b) it being banned.

I said to (b) that they’d be mad. There is no practical way to ban this other than prevent us from using Google. And that would be mad.

I also pointed out the futility of such actions. That is a futile attempt to safeguard their misbegotten exclusivity SLT and TRC actually put people in jail in 2000-01. Not much good it did them.

But more interesting is the answer that was generated by question (a). I said that this was a golden opportunity to market broadband and netbooks. The value proposition of broadband has always been clear to knowledge workers; those who look up words, write blogs, etc. The value of the Internet and broadband connectivity has been less clear for those who are not into book learning. Porn, maybe.

But now, wow. Here’s the reason to buy a netbook for everyone with family abroad. If I was a teleco, I’d be pushing netbooks and dongles hard, from now, to new demographic segments.

I’d also be ramping up making more applications available for those with netbooks and smart phones. All this time there weren’t enough potential buyers, defined by people with connectivity. Now with voice as the driver there will be.

And money is money. Whether it comes as revenue from international calls or whether it comes as broadband revenue or revenue share from applications.

3 Comments

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Abu Saeed Khan
August 31, 2010, 10:35 am
The best is yet to come……….
Kareem
September 15, 2010, 2:37 pm
True, but don’t you think with the unlimited packages offered by telco, this wouldn’t really benefit them? True there is a fair user policy, but you pay a fixed amount for unlimited internet access. I understand that this will definitely attract new broadband subscribers, but how exactly would you generate additional revenue from existing broadband users?