A View on View :: Will Rogers Launch VOIP Service by July 1?

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Will Rogers Launch VOIP Service by July 1?

by Mark Evans on Thu 16 Jun 2005 07:19 AM EDT | Permanent Link

There are a couple ways to read the complete silence surrounding Rogers Communications' launch of a cable telephony service. Either everything is on track for the July 1 target date set by CEO Ted Rogers, or there's still lots of work to be done and Rogers has gone into radio silence until it resolves these issues. According to a Rogers PR person everything's on track for a mid-summer launch, and trials are underway. Still, July 1 (the 20th anniversary of Rogers Wireless) is only two weeks away. One of the big issues Rogers needs to tackle is pricing. The company needs to decide whether it wants to go the Videotron route with low prices so it can quickly win market share; follow Shaw's lead and sell cable telephony as a premium service; or take the middle ground and sell it at attractive prices to customers who already buy other services. From what Ted Rogers has said, he has no plans to follow Videotron's lead. What will be as interesting is Bell's strategic and marketing response. How does an ILEC protect its turf while having little flexibility on price due to regulatory issues? Bell can market its traditional local phone service as high-quality, reliable and inexpensive, or it can roll out its own VOIP service - or it can do both. Either way, Bell needs to respond because Rogers will have plenty of momentum and goodwill as the new kid on the block.

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Re: Will Rogers Launch VOIP Service by July 1?

by Anonymous on Thu 16 Jun 2005 10:03 AM EDT | Permanent Link

How does an ILEC protect its turf while having little flexibility on price due to regulatory issues?

I'm not sure you fully get the regulatory issues at hand. Bell can price its Digital Voice offering at any price down to cost. Given that Digital Voice is access-independent, I figure this can go down to about seven bucks or so, net of long distance.

But you don't have to believe me -- instead break with the rest of the press by doing some real journalism. Find out from Bell just how low they can go. I think you'll be surprised.

Bell can market its traditional local phone service as high-quality, reliable and inexpensive, or it can roll out its own VOIP service - or it can do both.

Wait, "can"? Isn't this exactly what Bell is already doing with POTS on one hand and Digital Voice on the other?

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\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>