VoIP CREATING STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Like politics or any good daytime soap opera, the evolution of the voice-over-IP market is proving that just because two characters would appear to be natural enemies doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t end up together at some point.

Case in point: Net2Phone’s recent contract to provide co-branded retail services to Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago. The agreement, which comes through Net2Phone’s Global Services group, is one of the first in which an incumbent carrier has outsourced a service that it already is providing and risked cannibalizing its own revenue.

However, as VoIP services hit the mainstream, more incumbents may be forced to make the same choice, said Bryan Wiener, president of Net2Phone Global Services. And while some incumbents will see a short-term falloff in revenue, ultimately there will be a net increase.

“There might be some cannibalization,” he said. “But in a lot of these countries in Latin America--and this could go for any market that is not hyper-competitive--there is generally an underserved market.”

Under terms of the contract, TSTT--which is owned by Cable & Wireless--will sell VoIP calling cards and set up VoIP call shop services that resemble Internet cafés, but will be focused mostly on selling voice service. Net2Phone is putting Cisco gateways into TSTTs central offices and is handling all of the back office as well as SS7 elements of the operation.

“Our platform runs billions of VoIP retail minutes, so we have no concern about scaling,” Wiener said.

In the VoIP call shop scenario, the company is providing premises-based gateways that will plug into a broadband connection (often WiMax) supplied by TSTT.