Do not write off the dinosaurs just yet
Telephony companies have traditionally made their money from carrying voice calls. The cost to the caller, particularly from long-distance calls, was substantial.
This was because it reflected the cost of building and managing a network infrastructure and connecting with other companies to create international coverage.
Notwithstanding the monopoly-busting deregulation of voice markets in the mid to late 1990s, large national telephony companies still dominate voice markets and voice revenues (driven by call duration and distance) remain a key component of the sales mix.
Cue the entrance of funky new internet companies such as Skype and Vonage and the VoIP offerings of big internet companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. They present VoIP as a disruptive technology that will overhaul the business models of the incumbent telephony dinosaurs.
These companies have no existing voice business to cannibalise, no infrastructure costs to recoup, are adept at marketing to internet users and can offer national and international voice calls for free, or at extremely low costs. All of which explains the mounting cacophony surrounding the imagined death of traditional telephony companies.
The reasoning that underpins this contention is, however, spurious. Telephony companies have been operating in an increasingly competitive environment since deregulation, and the margins on their voice businesses have been remorselessly squeezed as a consequence.
VoIP technology will inevitably stimulate further competition in the voice market and accelerate the tightening of margins. However, shrewd companies have been aggressively diversifying their overall offerings away from voice revenues for a number of years.
The communications market is now far broader than merely fixed voice, a market segment that is indisputably in decline. Once mobile voice, data access, managed network services and content provision are added to the mix, the market no longer appears to be in terminal decline but is both far larger and growing at a healthy clip.
Communications requirements for professional and personal purposes is spiralling. People both need to be contactable and to process information, whether that means remote workers getting sales figures from head office or residential broadband subscribers sending holiday snaps to friends.
Network access is consequently key to consumers and home users alike, all of whom are now spending healthy sums for non-voice services such as e-mail, internet access, data storage and backup.
Other services are also emerging that will place further demands on consumer wallets (video on demand and online games) and corporate budgets (video-conferencing and enterprise applications).
As dependency on the network and the services that flow over it grows, innovative communications companies that see opportunities rather than threats are strengthened. They have large networks, strong brand names, scale, credibility and large customer bases.
So, before armchair market pundits mourn the demise of BT, they should listen to Ben Verwaayen, chief executive of BT, talking about how his business should be seen as a global IT services company that manages the data networks of its large corporate clients, provides outsourced services such as remote desktop support to its small and medium enterprise clients and serves video content through broadband lines to its retail customers. Traditional telephony now accounts for only 15 per cent of BT’s total revenues.
There is an illuminating example of the seemingly destructive, but ultimately beneficent, power of the pervasive network in another market. Look at the surging growth in online revenues at the leading record labels, until recently complaining about piracy and intellectual property protection and trying to sue students who used file-sharing to swap music.
In the networked, broadband world of the near future, voice will simply be reduced to packets of data to be served, alongside myriad other packets containing video, text, music or spreadsheets, to and from connected users.
There is no intrinsic commercial value to the content (your voice is not a Hollywood blockbuster) and the technology required to enable VoIP services is increasingly standard and inexpensive.
VoIP will simply be a standard application in an integrated communications bundle.
The critical issues for the corporate customer will be the coverage and integrity of the network, the security of the data, the prioritisation of applications.
Consumers, on the other hand, want more bandwidth at lower cost, whether at home or while mobile, and more interesting content.
Voice was formerly the lifeblood of the telecoms industry, but leading communications companies that capitalise on the opportunities offered by the IP-networked world will be far too busy making money from the provision of network access and value-added services to worry much about sweeping up the crumbs offered by VoIP.
VoIP拨通电信公司的转型
从传统意义上说，电话公司的收入主要来自于通话费用。对于呼叫方来说，打一个电话（尤其是长途电话）的费用一度是比较昂贵的。
这是因为，以前的通话费中不仅包括网络设施的建设和管理费用，还分担了电话公司为了实现国际通话而与其它公司互联所花费的成本。
尽管上世纪90年代中晚期，语音通话市场掀起了一场反垄断浪潮，但现在大型国有电话公司依然主导着整个语音通话市场，而来自这块市场的收入依旧是电话公司收入的重要组成部分。（通话时间越长，距离越远，电话公司就越有利可图。）
现在，有一批新兴网络公司涌入了这一市场，比如Skype和Vonage公司等，而包括Google、雅虎和微软在内的一些大牌网络公司也陆续推出了VoIP业务。这些网络公司将VoIP作为一种颠覆性的技术呈现在了公众面前，并希望这一利器将彻底颠覆电信巨头现有的运营模式。
这些网络公司不存在传统语音电话业务，因而无需为了发展新业务而重新调配资源；也不需要背负基础设施建设的经济包袱。他们擅于向网民推销业务，能够提供免费或极其低廉的国内、国际语音通话服务。正是基于以上这些原因，越来越多的人认为，这些网络公司将是传统电信公司的终结者。
但是支持这一观点的论据似乎是站不住脚的。自从电信行业的垄断局面被打破以来，传统电信公司一直都是在竞争越来越激烈的环境中运营，其来自语音通话服务方面的利润已经大幅度地缩水了。
VoIP技术的产生，的确不可避免地会在语音通话市场激发新一轮的竞争，并加快利润下滑的速度。但是，精明的电话公司早在多年前就已积极开展多元化经营，推出了许多语音通话以外的业务。
目前，固话业务无疑是在萎缩，但是通信市场远远不只是固定电话这一个业务而已。如果将移动语音服务、数据传输、托管网络服务和内容服务都算上的话，电信市场非但没有显得江河日下，相反还处于一个前景广阔、健康发展的阶段。
无论是企业还是个人，对于通信服务的需求都在急速增长。人们不仅需要随时保持畅通的联系，而且还需要方便地获取信息。比方说，身处外地的员工需要从公司总部获取销售数据，而家庭宽带用户则希望能与友人分享度假时拍摄的照片。
因此，对消费者和家庭用户来说，网络接入能力是最重要的。他们正日益增加在非通话服务（如电子邮件收发、互联网冲浪、数据存储和备份等）方面的消费支出。
而其它一些层出不穷的新服务也都盯紧了消费者的钱包（比如视频点播和联网游戏），另一些新业务则打起了企业客户的主意（如电视会议和企业应用等）。
随着人们对网络以及网上服务的依赖日益加深，一些敢于创新的电信公司从这一趋势中看到的是更大的发展机会，而不是威胁。电信公司的网络覆盖广，品牌知名度高，规模大，信誉良好，并且拥有广泛的客户基础，这些都是有利因素。
因此，在那些脱离实际的学者们为“走向没落”的英国电信公司（BT）潸然落泪之前，他们应该听听这家公司的首席执行官本?费尔维恩（Ben Verwaayen）怎么说。费尔维恩认为，人们应该将英国电信公司当作一家全球IT服务商来看待。英国电信公司目前的业务包括：替大型公司客户管理数据网络、向中小型企业客户提供诸如远程桌面服务之类的外包服务，以及通过其宽带网络向普通消费者提供视频点播服务。传统电话服务收入只占英国电信公司总收入的15%。
对不少行业来说，无孔不入的网络看上去似乎是一股破坏性力量，但最终却都成为促进行业发展的力量。这一点在另外一块市场上也得到了证明。大唱片公司一直抱怨网络引发了猖獗的盗版现象，使知识产权受到严重侵害，并叫嚷着要对那些利用互联网共享、传播音乐的学生采取法律手段。但是，看看今天的情况吧，这些公司的网上销售收入呈现出迅猛发展之势。
在不远的将来，我们将身处一个宽带世界，语音通话将被当作数据包处理，它将和视频、文本、音乐、图表以及千千万万数据包一样，在联网用户之间自由地传输。
届时，语音数据包的内容本身将不具有商业价值（你又不是好莱坞的红人），而VoIP服务所需要的技术也将越来越普及，成本也将越来越低。
VoIP最终将成为通信服务组合中的一项标准功能。
对于企业客户来说，他们最关心的将是网络的覆盖率和完整性问题、数据的保密问题以及各个应用程序的升级问题。
另一方面，无论在家中上网还是移动上网，普通消费者都希望能以更低的价格获得更大的带宽，以及更为吸引人的内容。
语音通话曾经一度是电信行业的生命线。但现在，领先的电信公司已经把握住了互联网带来的机遇，通过网络接入业务和增值服务赚钱。这些业务的收入增长让他们尝到了甜头并乐此不疲，根本无暇去理会VoIP引发的杞人忧天般的哀叹。
