Tom Keating writes today on a story from the Dallas Morning news about CompUSA seeing huge growth in VoIP sales within their stores. I am sure this is true but I wonder if those retailers are ready for P2P SIP. My sources tell me that when it comes to placing VoIP product on retail shelves the stores are asking for the moon and stars.
As an example, if a device manufacturer wants to place hardware on the shelves with a FREE VoIP (soon P2P SIP) service attached the stores want a residual. A residual on WHAT!? If it’s free I am failing to see where the residual is coming from.
The likes of Best Buy, CompUSA etc. need to gain some VoIP understanding. If VoIP is really going to take off in their stores they need to approach the free for use networks differently. The likes of Vonage who apparently have never-ending deep pockets are about to learn that P2P SIP will change their networks forever.
P2P SIP will be bundled with various devices and the device manufacturers should not be penalized for doing so. They should be able to sell their products in these stores based on a one time sale revenue split and if the network eventually does generate revenue that is when the retailers will get their share. Many of these P2P SIP offerings that will be coming down the pipe will have Voicemail, PSTN service etc. but many will not offer that right away.
If the retailers really want to see their VoIP revenue blossom they need to take a new tact.