What's holding VoIP back?

Voice Over IP software can save us all up to 85% on our overseas phone calls. So how come we're not all using it? We investigate the top 6 reasons...

If you haven't heard of Voice Over IP - or VOIP - yet, you soon will. Quite simply, Voice over IP, or Internet Telephony, is the ability to make a voice call similar to a telephone call, but using the Internet. If you have a broadband Internet connection you can save money on telephone calls. So how much can you save?

• Up to 85% on International calls.


• 100% on calls to other Internet users - calls are free, in many cases.

2005 is shaping up to be the year that Internet Telephony really takes off. Usage of products such as Skype and Net2Phone are becoming more and more common, and providers such as Engin (www.engin.com.au) are offering direct Internet Telephony services through your own home phone, using a box to connect it to your broadband connection.

But will this technology reach mass acceptance and really blossom in the marketplace?

Where is VOIP going?

We looked at a range of products to see how they compared from a usability perspective and whether there were any common issues between them, including Skype, DingoTel, GloPhone, PC-Telephone, Net2Phone and Engin. These services certainly offer a lot of benefits, with cost coming top of the list - but they are all missing out when it comes to usability.

There is no doubt that Internet Telephony is going to take off in a big way over the next year. Many businesses are investing in VOIP for internal use, with quite a few also considering external uses too. Skype reports over ninety million downloads of its software, with one point five million online at any one time. New Voice over IP services are appearing regularly. The potential market is huge, when you consider how much money is spent making phone calls and how quickly broadband usage is growing in Australia and around the world.

So with all this potential, why isn't the take-up moving faster?

Top 6 reasons

We took at look at five well-known Internet Telephone packages, and compared them to some of the other low-cost services available. For each product we looked at a range of factors, from value for money through to functionality, usability and stability. We found that there are five core reasons why this technology isn't moving faster in the market place.

1. Not explaining what the service is

Internet Telephony is a pretty new concept for many people, and needs to be clearly and carefully explained if you want people to invest in it. Even getting people to try it out for free requires a certain level of understanding; people won't try something for free if they're worried about what they might be installing.

Many Internet Telephony services jump straight into listing their rates or their features, with very little explanation given to what this service really is and what it means to the user. For example one of them throws 'PC2PC calls are free' at the user, expecting everyone to know what this means. Another uses P2P and expects non-technical users to understand what it means.

In usability terms, it is very simple. If people don't know what you are selling, they won't buy it.

Luckily, the solution is very simple too. Make it clear. Don't talk down to people, but offer a 'What is Internet Telephony?' link that clearly explains how things work. Imagine your own mother or father coming across the product - if they can understand it, they might just use it.

2. Not offering enough reason to switch

The harder you make people work, the less they appreciate it. Most employees will tell you that for free, and most Internet users who struggle to use a site tell us frequently and loudly. Make it simple, and they buy.

However the majority of services we reviewed make users work far too hard to understand why they should look into using this services. Most offer a generic 'low rates' or 'cheap calls' statement and mention free calls to other computers, but that's far from making the case for me to switch.

Instead the conscientious user is forced to dig deep into the site to find a list of rates, that are often listed in Euros or US dollars and in unit prices - for example $0.029. That doesn't tell anyone too much, and so the user is then forced to open a spreadsheet or breakout pen and pad to start working out what this means in terms of call costs and comparisons.

Our review showed that overseas calls can be between 60% and 85% cheaper using these products, yet those figures just don't appear to help people make a choice.

Some providers offer a bill analyzer or similar mechanism to help people see how much money they might save, but this is the exception rather than the norm currently.

People need to understand what the service is first, but they also need to understand why they should use it.

3. Poor usability, too much technical skill required

In reviewing these products we found a high level of technical skill required for many of them in far too many places. Downloads that required a change in browser, obscure error messages on failing to connect, changing product names that required multiple approvals in the firewall, the list is almost endless. Technical users working in or around the IT industry would breeze through the process in most cases, but less technical users face a series of hurdles stretching on and on. In our experience with usability testing we often see users stop and give up at the smallest of hurdles - even tiny confusions or errors can be off putting enough for the user to decide to quit.

One of the products we tested uses a mock up of a telephone interface as the main way of interacting with the software. Whilst this does provide a level of comfort - if your own phone happens to look anything like theirs, that is - it also makes using the menus and functions that come with the software quite confusing.

Even the best products we reviewed had usability issues and confusions that could easily stop new users in their tracks - and many offered very poor support for if things went wrong. The worst products made even the simplest tasks such as placing a call and adding a new contact difficult.

Worryingly, the most usable product in our review is now starting to add more features which are increasing the power of the software at the expense of its simplicity. This is a concerning trend, if Internet Telephony is going to continue to grow.

A user-centric design process is easy to follow and would solve many of these problems. Putting the user into the center of the design process and iteratively designing around their requirements is simple and cost effective, and is guaranteed to help win in new business.

4. No cross product support

Imagine what life would be like if you could only call people who had a mobile phone on the same network as yours? If friends and family had mobile phones on other networks, you wouldn't ever be able to call them.

Now imagine that there were eight to ten networks to choose from instead of just a handful. Not pretty, is it?

Right now, that is one of the key problems facing Internet Telephony. If you have Skype you can talk to Skype users, but not your friend who's using DingoTel. And he can't talk to his brother who's using PC-Telephone. In fact as far as we could tell none of the providers offer the ability to contact users on different software.

Whilst this is understandably a business tactic aimed at controlling the marketplace, the fact is that right now the marketplace has a wide range of software choices that is only likely to increase as more and more players come online. Locking customers out from talking to people on other software makes for a horrible user experience, and it's going to slow down mass acceptance of this technology.

5. Poor support for landline dialing

When you use your telephone to dial overseas, you generally get no help in terms of what codes to use and which digits to ignore from the overseas local number. You either know that stuff, or you ferret it out from the Telstra site - or if you're like me, you just keep plugging away with different variations until you get a connection. It's not exactly great user support.

For example, one of the products we reviewed refused to accept the standard International dialing code for the UK - 001144. Instead we had to find out by trial and error that a plus was required (+44). We did work it out, but it took a while.

Another problem we encountered was with using phone menu systems. At one point we called a credit card help line overseas, which immediately asked us to make a choice using the keypad. But whatever we pressed on the Internet Telephony keypad, nothing seemed to get through. After repeating it's request a number of times, the help line eventually hung up on us and forced us back to a landline approach - not exactly a great experience.

The power of software is that it can overcome all that, and make dialing overseas a breeze.

But almost none of the Internet Telephone software options we reviewed is making any really effort to do this. Most present you with a standard numeric keypad and leave you to work out the codes and dropped digits for yourself.

Only one package, Net2Phone (www.net2phone.com) offers a country list with the International codes within the dialer, a very useful start. None of the packages we reviewed offered any visible assistance with overseas calling, or for problems with National/Local calls either.



And this is where Internet Telephony is really going to lose out. Long distance and overseas calls are where the most money is spent, and hence the greatest selling point for Internet Telephony software. But if it's just as easy to pick up the phone and dial, half the incentive is gone. It has to be easier to make that call with your Internet Telephone software, if the market is going to grow significantly.

Making a telephone call over the Internet can be much easier, more pleasant and far cheaper than using your landline. It just takes a little more focus on ease of use.