Panasonic jumps into VoIP

The two companies have announced they are going to "collaborate" to offer Panasonic's GLOBARANGE hybrid cordless phone. Joip, the newly formed consumer brand/service for deltathree, will be the exclusive VoIP service provider Their webpage placeholder is at www.joip.com.

It's an interesting move by both companies. The hardware isn't world shattering; the GLOBARANGE phones are hybrid 2-line 5.8 GHz and DECT cordless phones that support both legacy “ POTS” service and “joip-powered” VoIP service, so you can make calls either on the regular landline or to another Panasonic/joip user. Of course, the joip-to-joip/Panasonic-to-Panasonic call is free - presuming you have paid the bill on your broadband connection - and you can make unlimited joip calls.

As you might imagine, joip will also offer GLOBARANGE users the ability to, shall we say, “joip-out” to non-joip numbers at “extremely competitive rates” and offer a bunch of “affordable” add-on features for GLOBARANGE users, including ringtones, text messaging, a joip community directly, call forwarding to multiple number, advanced do-not-disturb options, and voice messaging notification via e-mail.

Yes, you've heard this all before too - a basic free service that charges extra for the bells and whistles, or in this case, the ringtones and advanced feature.

However, Panasonic has something very important to bring to the game: Shelf space at Big Boxes and stories worldwide. Add on the Panasonic name-brand and you suddenly have Panasonic planning to play ball against GE/Thompson and the SunRocket lads with their VoIP phone/service packaging on store shelves.

Deltathree has been around for almost forever in the VoIP space (1996), but this is the first time its teamed with a major consumer brand in the shelf space play.

Will it work? Panasonic has the marketing money to make it work and the traditional business of selling cordless/wireless phones is pretty much a flat line. People buy new home handsets when the old ones break or when they want to add a cordless extension to another room in the home. The key for Panasonic to move a VoIP phone over a “dumb” phone is the hook of free service, so once you buy a joip phone for your home, then you have to go enable the long distance relatives (gifts for birthdays, holidays) and friends (“Hey, this is costing you money! Go get a joip phone, dude!”).

The longer-distance the relative (i.e. international call), the more inclined you are to move to joip. So, if you've got a big enough family, and you want to spend a couple hundred bucks in hardware, you could joip-up pretty quick.

On the other hand, many of the penny pinchers of the world have already taken the plunge and migrated to Skype, Vonage, and the other long-distance money-saving VoIP services of the world. According to a number of phone-wonks, there's a whole “second wave” of unwashed masses who have been reluctant to give up their legacy telly. A brand name like Panasonic, along with a good dose of marketing bucks might move some of them into the VoIP world. µ