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August 20, 2004

VoIP May Reach Underserved in NYC

By Nancy Gohring

Some of the big cellular operators want access to New York City light poles to improve cellular service: The result may be cheap home phones for people without any telephone service. Apparently the city may offer discounted leasing rates on pole access in wealthy areas in exchange for asking the operators to offer cheap voice over Wi-Fi service, using the pole tops, in underserved areas. IDT, which said in April that it would offer a Wi-Fi phone service in New Jersey, said it’s interested in the plan.

The New Jersey plan leverages IDT’s fixed wireless business via its Winstar acquisition for backhaul. The Wi-Fi Planet story reports that IDT originally thought the service would cost users $2 a month plus 5 cents per minute. It’s hard to say if that’s a good deal because most local phone companies offer a flat rate and 5 cents is average for long distance minutes.

It’s an interesting plan to extend service to the underserved but would appear to have some technical limitations. The most notable is that the city is only offering access to poles at intersections. That limits the number of access points a company can hang and in turn limits the number of users within range that can use the service. It would also limit coverage area, which would make it hard to market the service in a neighborhood.

Posted by nancyg at August 20, 2004 1:15 PM

Categories: Voice

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