November 24, 2005

In the B2B segment, the moniker "On Demand" has now become a strong buzzword to accurately describe B2B, eCommerce and modern eBusiness applications.

From technologies such as Internet-based "on demand storage" and computing utilities to hosted CRM (customer relationship management) applications, business people have become really familiar with the "on demand" concept.

Additionally, On Demand technology represents a low-cost and high-flexibility way of delivering software and various online services to the B2B community.

Notwhitstanding all of that, there are many areas in which on demand has not been as popular. One of these is the telco industry.

As a whole, telephone companies still charge per phone call (except when it comes to fixed, limited rate plans).

This is changing, though. For example, there is a company called AwakeTel that offers unlimited local and international dialing for a fixed charge of $29.95 a month.

AwakeTel is a new service -- indeed, represents a new kind of service altogether -- and there are still some kinks. For example, it appears to connect better to larger foreign cities than to smaller ones, at least in my experiments with the service.

That said, I have been a VoIP phone users for fourteen months and I have found that quality has improved over that time. New services and technologies always go through a ramp-up period.

The important point to keep in mind is that on demand is sweeping across everything like a tidal wave. In this case, I am greatly curious as to how the existing telco model can survive based on competition from an on demand service like that of AwakeTel.

Source: Line 56