Do you have any experience with Vonage or Skype you are willing to share?
The bank I just worked for uses Skype for all non urgent or non secure internal calls between international and national offices and branches. We were using a non released beta system that I believe was due for release shortly which worked outside of WAN’s on any network. The technoloy is the same as Peer to Peer file sharing that is connected to a lan/phone exchange terminal at one the receivers end, I even believe some of the core code was done by Kaaza.
I worked on a .Net webservices site that was designed to allow internet visitors to contact a call center direct from any pc or PDA without the ‘heavy’ VoIP software normally needed. It was ‘pulled’ when marketing figured out it was not that likely to be a money spinner as far as cost saving Vs technology were headed. We ended up restarting a program for faster web based call centers where users can connect live with an operator from their pc similar to ICQ or chat, but more secure.
The costs saving analysis basic came down to the fact that bulk discounts are available by purchasing time from telco companies, they even evaluated using the discount phone cards you buy from shops etc and preconfiguring phones to use these.
We had a few rather larger software problems that were being ‘fixed’ but never were, constant bad lines and delays or dropouts were not unusual.
Thanks.
I’m not convinced the quality can hold up yet. So far no one who has reviewed Skype for me has had glowing comments. I’ve got a pretty quick link as long as the service provider can keep the connection intact. That seems to be a major issue in that slower dialups are questionable at best with the service but solid cable appears to offer an advantage.