CallVantage Watch

I'd hate for AT&T to simply cut off CallVantage for those of us who have it. Today Network World recaps something I wrote earlier in the month, and which has been on DSLReports/BroadbandReports as well. Simply put, AT&T is not putting any new customers on the CallVantage platform.

This comes at a time when the cable operators like giant Comcast are beginning to innovate with new features as well as seeing daily growth every day from customers wanting to go triple=play, while, as Network World reports, Vonage and Packet8 are seeing slow downs.

Why is this happening?

For starter, AT&T under the SBC leadership has pretty much stopped innovating. Vonage and Packet 8 continue to sell basically the same thing to consumers and small businesses that were their offerings when I started VoIPWatch back in late 2003. What they offer is really Voice 1.5, where the only difference is the wire that connects to the phone now being Ethernet vs. twisted pair, and who bills the customer. That's not innovation.

AT&T had/has the AT&T Labs, perhaps the world's most innovative think tank for technology. But over the last five years or more AT&T has not innovated, something they did when they launched CallVantage, the service that has spawned many "me too" offerings from the likes of AOL, Earthlink and others. Even the Verizon VoiceWing product is a "me too" as they simply copied the offering from Vonage and rolled out a VoIP service using Delta Three's platform. YAWN.

This lack of innovation though really only resides with the big telcos and some of the VoIP players. Many other companies are innovating, and those are the companies that are offering Voice 2.0 and those are the companies you find here in VoIPWatch.

Comments

[Chris B]

I am not surprised at all! Vonage and Packet 8 (or 8x8)do not have the investment resources of time and money for development as AT&T does, but you still need the "right people" to actually get new innovations to market. You can't just throw money at it or think your development staff of 5 years ago are automatically the right guys for the job.

My company has done a lot of development work for customers trying to make other platforms with more modern features work. There are many challenges in making a complete solution. I've seen a lot of people go off and say," well I'm just going to buy "x" switch and Broadsoft and I'll be on my way". Invariable, we end up getting a call back 6 months down the line with them screaming, "Help".
It really comes down to this, stay with the old ways and feature sets for a somewhat more reliable system, invest lots of money on a complete back end platform and then try and make all the the pieces work together ok, or buy a complete managed service that takes care of everything for you, which is what we do. Obviously, AT&T as taken the first and possible even given up completely.

VoIP sales are skyrocketing! Their losses are due to the fact that true innovators with better platforms, however small they may be, are earning their customers business. They are not.