SOYO Group took a press release today indicating that Walmart is selling their VoIP phone through their website. Indeed it is available in Walmart’s website for $100. The phone comes with $5 worth of PSTN call time. Incidentally, the phone is available at SOYO’s website that comes with $50 worth of PSTN call time. PSTN connectivity is provided by Z-Connect and charges are comparable to many calling card rates. For example, calls to US are charged $.03 per minute. It will cost $10 per month for the ability to receive calls from PSTN. The main focus seems to be cheaper calls to PSTN. Since the rates are comparable to calling cards that are already available, the real advantage is the simplified dialing procedure. But it is a very simple matter for a calling card company to build a specialized but an inexpensive PSTN phone that provides an equivalently simple dialing procedure. One would have thought that Walmart would have taken that route.
Posted by aswath at December 23, 2004 12:25 AM