GigaOM

5000 minutes is definitely not a lot of talk time I agree, although how do they plan to distinguish residential from commercial usage without actually monitoring transactions and violating privacy?

not to mention their $30/month plan for their so-called “unlimited” isn’t exactly competitive with Vonage’s offering ($25/month), and very-much not with lingo.com’s ($20/month) offering (which is the one i have, and happily use to make unlimited calls France).

Om,

I used to work for a CLEC and we investigated everyone who used more than 2500 minutes a month. These limits have a lot to do with potential misuse by a business or as a data line or reselling use of the line. For many CLECs, it’s not possible to make a profit when a customer uses more than 2500 long distance minutes.

Jacob, Verizon is certainly no CLEC.

Forget VOIP, look at the noise they have been making about iobi…and what does their disclaimer say on the iobi website https://www22.verizon.com/iobi/

They don’t even sound like an $75 billion IT company…I used to think the CIO is a buffoon, but now I think, the IT department who built this product is a total hack.

” Information sent via the Internet, including e-mail and text messages, is not secure and may be intercepted by third parties during transmission. Verizon is not responsible for the content of messages sent via the e-mail feature. iobi Home, iobi Professional, and iobi Enterprise may not be used for any unlawful purpose, such as sending unsolicited commercial e-mail messages (e.g., spamming). Recipient is responsible for the cost of receiving text messages, if any. Taxes and other charges apply. “

Did we say unlimited?

Om Malik notes that Verizon’s VoiceWing Unlimited VoIP plan may not be so unlimited after all. From the fine print:Usage must be consistent with normal residential use for one household. Verizon reserves the right to monitor usage for possible abuse…

Why single-out VZ as if they’re the only ones that position plans like this? From the TOS of AT&T CallVantage:

“If you subscribe to a calling plan which included unlimited calling of any type, unless otherwise specified by your specific plan in marketing materials associated therewith, any usage in excess of 5,000 aggregate minutes per month (or 7,500 minutes for the 2-Line Plan, and certain AT&T teleworker plans offered to end users in conjunction with a corporate service), taking into account all types of calling in your plan which are provided on an unlimited basis, shall be presumed to be not consistent with these restrictions and shall be subject to the conditions above. AT&T also reserves the right to impose usage caps on second lines offered as part of a Service offer.”

good catch mike. funny t is now SBC. and well, time to read the fine print on all VoIP service providers… but thanks for the heads up

What is under this rock is the fundamental tussle between flat rate pricing (http://blog.tomevslin.com/2005/02/subscription_pr.html) used by almost all of the VoIP players and the usage based pricing (http://www.sipphone.com/email/thecall15.html) used by SIPPhone and SkypeOut and I suspect soon will be joined by other IM services.

The point you bring up is from the view of “heavy users”. But as VoIP tries to spread to medium and low users, this point will come to foreground.

here’s a full fineprint from the site: “Usage must be consistent with normal residential use for one household. Verizon reserves the right to monitor the usage rates of accounts for possible abuse of service. More than 5,000 minutes a month is considered beyond normal residential use and may be investigated, resulting in potential termination of service. VoiceWing offers a 30-day Money Back Guarantee. Equipment is a new or fully inspected, tested and warranted return unit.”

hehe

Distinct possibility that this is actually a trend to move from unlimited to tiered service. I’m guessing we might see the same for Internet service in the future — where unlimited is replaced by “reasonable.” What reasonable is — well is TBD. But let’s face it. When you have 2 users in 1000 using 90% of the bandwidth — it *Might* actually be time to think about “fairness” at the GROSS level.

how about viatalk at $199 for 2 years. thye have an abnormally long list of standard features also… uncluding recording a call :P ….

[...] GigaOM For Verizon VoIP, Unlimited Really Means 5000 Minutes «Verizon VoiceWing fine-print on unlimited plans. Verizon reserves the right to monitor usage for possible abuse of service. For packages with unlimited calling, more than 5,000 minutes a month is [...]

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