VoiceWing: Another VoIP Bites the Dust

Interesting news broke today about Verizon’s VoiceWing VoIP phone services. Apparently, Verizon plans to scrap VoiceWing in less than a month, on 3/31/2009. Existing customers will be forced to port their number to alternative services, and the porting could take as long as 3 weeks according to Verizon.

When this press release hit, I learned something I hadn’t known before about VoiceWing; this service offering by “Verizon” was actually the private label VoIP service provided by none other than DeltaThree, Inc. I know of several private label providers, started up by small businesses or even individuals, but I had no idea that a company with the size, reputation, infrastructure, and resources of Verizon would opt to offer VoIP by way of a private label provider.

It makes me wonder if Verizon’s stint into the VoIP marketplace was nothing more than a marketing test, to gage whether it would be worthwhile to promote VoIP service via packages of broadband and ATA to the consumer market at large, rather than trying to approach it from the “digital phone” angle that is being successfully offered by the cable companies – essentially VoIP carried over the cable companies’ infrastructure including fiber optic networks. In fact, Verizon announced plans for several new services, essentially VoIP technologies, that will indeed be carried over – you guessed it – Verizon’s own fiber optic networks. Also planned is a broadband carried service called “The Hub” which includes video with touch screen. (Looking forward to more on that one..)

Apparently, the marketing test didn’t pan out too well. Bobbi Henson, Verizon’s spokeswoman, stated that VoiceWing was just promoted to a “niche market” and not the masses. Without disclosing the size of VoiceWing’s customer database, apparently it was quite small – or “not material” in Henson’s words. It probably didn’t help that as things turn out, Deltathree is on shaky ground. The company is reportedly “running out of money” and has been delisted from NasDaq…Ouch.

Filed under: VoIP Blog

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!