We’ve all heard of the potential anti-consumer problems associated with service bundling by the big carriers–AT&T, Comcast, and the like. Bundling is a tactic designed to lock customers into a revenue protection scheme that benefits a single service provider at the expense of consumer choice and tit-for-tat competition. In other words, if I spent $100 a month with Comcast in order to get my TV, my Internet access, and my phone service, I won’t be spending $25 a month to get my service from Vonage.
But there is one kind of bundling that I think would work out great, sell more bandwidth (benefiting the carrier), sell more application services (benefiting the application provider), and provide a richer, more useful experience for consumers all at once. The closest thing I can think of to make an analogy to this is Apple’s .Mac, only with a real value proposition. In its current form, I actually think .Mac rather sucks. It just isn’t worth the hundred bucks a year. But add some Web 2.0 ingredients to it–simple blogging content management and integration with other apps (including VOICE) and suddenly it’s looking pretty good.
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FRANKFURT (Reuters)—German conglomerate Siemens and computer giant IBM are teaming up to offer Internet phone calls launched directly from email or instant messaging applications, Siemens said on Monday.
The two companies plan to embed Siemens HiPath softswitches for voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) into IBM’s Lotus Notes and Domino business software.
The result will be that customers will be able to launch phone calls and conferences with one click from their email, Web conferencing or instant messaging sessions, Siemens said.
Siemens added in a statement that the integrated features were expected to be available to customers by this summer.
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