Vodafone takes the fight to VoIP | The Register

Vodafone takes the fight to VoIP | The Register

Vodafone is going to launch a low cost 3G voice service "@Home", initially in Germany under the "ZuHause" name. This will be a flat rate service (up to 1,000 minutes per month) for local and national dialing (so flat rate unless you're a very heavy user!!!), mobile and international calls are on top of this (and only in your "home" cell).

They have already launched a 3G data service which again is limited to the home cell, but is flat rate for 5GB/month (and more if you go above or outside your home cell).

There is an overhead for delivering packet voice though. The GSM codec uses about 13Kb/s to digitise voice and over a traditional circuit switched network which is synchronous that's all it takes. Moving to packet occurs an additional overhead of about 20% so round up to 20Kb/s, however since the network is probably not synchronous it can actually take it up to 40+Kb/s (20Kb/s each way).

VoIP will eventually take-over, but the fixed and wireless operators will do their best to try and stem the flood and keep revenues flowing on their voice networks.