STRAIGHT TALK
Straight Talk: Aaron Clauson, Blueface
19-08-2005
by Deirdre McArdle
Launched just a year ago, Blueface is making in-roads into the nascent market for Voice over IP (VoIP) -- a hotly-tipped technology that relies on the internet to make low-priced telephone calls possible. Deirdre McArdle caught up with Chief Technology Officer Aaron Clauson to learn more about the business.
ENN: Blueface has been around for over a year. How are things going? How many customers have you signed up?
Clauson: Well we've positioned ourselves as a communications service provider for residential and small business and while we would not consider ourselves exclusively a VoIP provider, it certainly is our main focus. At the moment in the Irish market we are one of two or three providers that will cater for the residential and small business market and that really is our focus, rather than aiming at corporates or government.
Initially things were quite slow, but I think that has more to do with people just finding out about you. In general the reaction has been quite positive, overall we're looking at 1,500 people who have requested a trial, or signed up for services and about half of those are now paying customers. We think this is pretty good for a year, and it's purely through word of mouth.
ENN: What are your targets for the year?
Clauson: Two thousand customers would be nice. We'd be looking to sign up around 10 customers a day.
ENN: You say you're focused on the residential and small business markets; as far as your customers go how is that broken down? Are consumers going for VoIP?
Clauson: Oh definitely, it's not just business customers that are signing up. People are actually porting their Eircom numbers to us. I think it probably works out at about 75 percent residential and 25 percent business customers so far.
ENN: With the broadband take-up relatively poor here, do you think Irish people are going to embrace VoIP?
Clauson: It's not that they're going to embrace VoIP, they don't really care about VoIP. What they're going to embrace is cheap service. If somebody is paying EUR30 or EUR40 a month for a broadband connection and someone comes along and tells them they can get their voice service -- what they're getting from Eircom -- for an extra EUR10 a month, well they don't care if it's VoIP or black magic, it's cheap. They'll switch over. So that's how the average Joe will pick it up. It's purely a value proposition for them.
ENN: With your VoIP service offering so dependent on the broadband roll-out, have you had any problems? Do you find it frustrating?
Clauson: Well I wouldn't say it's frustrating... well, no actually it is frustrating, I must admit. Not so much from the point of view that we didn't know this right from the start, but it is quite demanding that some internet connections are just not up to having VoIP. I think we're just going to have to work with the providers and fine-tune stuff our end and just keep working together until we get somewhere.
ENN: How much of a problem is it that there are no set levels of quality for broadband? Have customers complained about the quality of their VoIP service? Do you think consumers are going to be turned off by the fact that the quality isn't there yet?
Clauson: Yes, there's no doubt that and at this stage we've had a handful of customers who have tried it and haven't been happy with the quality and have sent back the equipment. We've tried a few different broadband providers and it just hasn't been up to scratch. I think, though, eventually market forces will force providers to do something about it and improve their services.
ENN: Should consumers be concerned about security attacks with VoIP?
Clauson: We've had no reports of that happening yet but I guess it's a case of risk versus rewards. If someone wants to snoop on somebody's conversation badly enough then they're going to find a way to do it, but they can also do that over PSTN today. I think security will definitely improve in the future. At the moment the client devices don't have security in-built so installing extra software is expensive, but once it's built into the units then it's no extra effort.
As far as spam goes, I've had one customer ring up and say he was getting calls from a US number and he wanted the number blocked. Really, the advantage of VoIP is that because the whole voice system is integrated into your PC you can simply block the number; it's a two-minute job. You can't ring up a traditional telecoms company and do that in two minutes.
ENN: With VoIP being heralded as the next revolution in the telecoms market and incumbents being warned to roll out VoIP services, are you worried that when the likes of Eircom do eventually offer VoIP that you will struggle to compete?
Clauson: We would actually like it if Eircom and BT started offering VoIP tomorrow. It would be great for our business as it would raise awareness of voice over IP. We actually want them to offer the service. I think if Eircom offered it they would need to improve their broadband service and then all other providers would need to lift their game as well, which would be good news for everyone.
Ultimately though, I think Eircom is struggling to decide whether to offer VoIP. They have everything to lose and nothing really to gain from it. Cheap international calls? They're making a nice little margin on international calls, and they wouldn't want to lose that.
ENN: If you don't see Eircom or BT as potential competition, who do you consider your main competitors?
Clauson: Skytel are the only other operator so far that have come out and said they are going to be exclusively offering residential VoIP but we've got first mover advantage on them by about 10 months. They did announce their unlimited package deals before us but we had ours all ready to go at that point so it was only about two or three weeks later that we released ours.
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