Price Spurs Demand for Triple-Play’s

Bear Stearns Finds Consumers View Services As Commodities By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 3/6/2008 2:53:00 PM

Price is the key factor driving demand for video, broadband and voice services, according to consumer research conducted by Bear Stearns.

“Our survey finds that users continue to view these services as ‘commodity-like’ with price the primary driver of demand,” the Wall Street firm said in a report by analyst Spencer Wang.

For its 2008 Communications Survey, Bear Stearns surveyed nearly 1,000 consumers.

“Consistent with our prior work, our survey finds that across all three products categories, price is the top factor affecting demand,” Wang wrote. “This implies that consumers view communication services as fairly ‘commodity-like,’ and that as competition rises, pricing power may wane. However, we still expect rational pricing given the oligopoly structure of the industry, although average revenue per user growth will likely slow going forward with more competition.”

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How To Gain With Business VoIP

Business houses have a different set of requirements pertaining to communication since their key motive is to focus on networking with clients and maintaining a constant contact with their customers. With clients coming from all across the globe and same for their suppliers and dealers they need a cheaper mode of communication; one that would not only prove to be cost effective but will also help them in increasing the productivity of their organization.

With the competition going uphill with more companies entering into the business sphere, it is imperative that the organizations have to search for ways to cut down their cost and increase their savings. This is precisely what guarantees a long successful run of the business.

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Does VoIP Make It Easier For Scammers?

By, Deb Shinder

If you’re considering switching from the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) service to VoIP, you might be wondering whether the change will make you more vulnerable to scammers, help protect you from common scams, or not make much difference at all.

Con games are about as old as human history; there will always be people around who attempt to use deception to persuade others to do something — often, to give them money or something else of value. In today’s electronic world, that something else may be passwords used to access various accounts at financial institutions, etc., or it might be credit card numbers and similar information used to obtain goods and charge them to someone else.

Most jurisdictions have fairly broad laws against fraud that cover both in-person and online scams, and many are now enacting legislation to deal specifically with the types of fraudulent schemes commonly perpehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giftrated over the Internet. How much of a threat is VoIP? Let’s take a look. Click here for the entire story.

New worm hits Skype

A new worm has hit the internet and is being delivered in the form of an instant message on the popular internet phone service Skype.

The worm accesses the host PC by utilizing Skype's application programming interface and then deactivates any security software before proceeding to mail itself to people on the victim's Skype list. It then starts accessing any passwords or personal information on the infected computer.

The instant-message chat invitation the worm is concealed in, reads: "Hey, where I put ur photo ;-) now u populr. oops sorry please dont look there. look what crazy photo Tiffany sent me, looks cool." Finnish security software company F-Secure has dubbed the worm W32/Skipi.A. Symantec meanwhile is calling it W32.Pykspa.D.

The company claims that the worm is one of a new family called Pykspa which have been surfacing recently in various forms on the internet. On August 16th this year the Skype network went down for the first time, due to millions of users rebooting their PCs at the same time following a Microsoft security update.

VoIP Outages Anger Users

Voip grows in popularity as prices continue to drop vs. traditional phone services. But if you have ever been the victim of an outage you know how frustrating it can be. Last month VoIP provider SunRocket closed their doors and shut off their service to 200,000 subscribers.

That's when a company called TeleBlend stepped in and with the help of various carriers are working to restore service to the old SunRocket customers. But SunRocket left such a mess of their company that it seems TeleBlend is having a difficult time maintaining service. On August 8, they had a disruption in their service, but are working with IP networking company Global Crossing and ex SunRocket customers who are the ones most affected. Click here for the full story.