High-quality services

High-quality services
It is fashionable now! And it is the way operators want to differentiate their services from competitors offering commodity best-effort-based services. As well as Bellsouth and AT&T, France Telecom is riding the same horse: pay for quality. FT will offer a new high quality VOIP service, using a new fixed VoIP phone (€60-100), and a monthly fee for using the service. FT targets to migrate its entire VoIP customer base by the end of 3Q06. But the service will only be available between subscribers of this service. BT is said to have the same approach, but has not yet provided any announcement. Of course such premium services are the answer to low-cost, low-quality services and the way to retain customers and revenues. The situation is serious as FT forecasts that 40% of all voice communication in France (+166%) will pass over VoIP networks by the end of 2006, and that 25% of its subscribers will use VOIP by end-06.

On the same wave, but coming from ISPs, Yahoo and AOL are willing to charge companies for safe and trusted emails. It is a praiseworthy effort to reduce spam and to "certify" legitimate messages. The solution is to mark email with a trust symbol in the inboxes of AOL and Yahoo! Customers.

Level of pricing such high-quality services has no interest in itself, but is symptomatic of a current change in mind in latest months. People are used to some quality standard in voice calls or mails, and are ready to pay to continue to have such a level of service. Is free internet over? Surely not, but people are concerned about internet misuse and will be happy to avoid disorder. 89% of respondents in an Epsilon Interactive and Roper ASW survey said they accept their ISP provider to include a trust icon indicating safe and legitimate e-mail that can be opened without fear.