AOL Unveils Pricey VoIP Offering (comment)

[PhoneBoy]

Please comment on this article here:

[mberlant]

This service offering seems to be overpriced in not one, but two dimensions.

First, the base price for unlimited US/Canada service is $29.99, which is $5-10 more than other black box/locked down services, like Vonage. In researching to add AOL to the Voxilla Compare Matrix I called AOL Internet Phone Customer Service and was disappointed by how little the CSR knew about the workings and requirements of the service. It was especially disturbing that he had not been briefed on the bandwidth requirements of the service offering.

The other dimension is a hidden cost. In order to use (or, more accurately, to manage) the service you must be a subscriber of AOL. This will add $5-10 to the cost, often making the customer pay for AOL service that duplicates services already being rendered by the user's ISP.

AOL seems to be targeting this service to existing AOL subscribers who are either unaware of the plethora of better value propositions in the open market or are so very content with their current AOL service that they are heppy to save a smaller amount of money each month in order to avoid dealing with an additional service provider.

[PhoneBoy]

Are you sure it's only $5-10 a month? I thought AOL's "Internet Only" access plan was like $14.95 now? Yeah, that's pretty whack.

[lonnie]

I'm pretty sure you can get stripped down access from AOL for as little as $5 a month, but it's time-based, so if you are also going to try and manage your telephony with their internet phone service you will have to upgrade your base account. I can't see AOL gaining a lot of *new* subscribers by rolling out the VoIP plan.

[PhoneBoy]

Today, they've announced their BYOD plan at $10 a month. They used to offer it at $5 a month way back when.