Competition in the bourgeoning voice over internet protocol (VoIP) segment heated up yesterday as two more telecommunications players launched IP telephony services that allow users to make phone calls through their computers for less than $60 a month.
New World Telecommunications (NWT) rolled out a new PC-to-phone 'soft-phone' service, NetTalk, at just $39 a month with a new phone number, targeting 100,000 NetTalk accounts in the first year.
The company also introduced a broadband phone service that allows subscribers to use an ordinary telephone to make calls over its broadband network.
The company is selling the broadband phone service as a bundled feature with its broadband access service.
It aims to attract 20,000 new bundled VoIP users by June next year, a target analysts call ambitious.
William Kwan, NWT's chief operating officer, is confident of achieving breakeven on the service by 2006.
'With our VoIP service, we are hoping to raise the arpu [average revenue per user] for our domestic fixed-line business. The payback period for our VoIP service is much shorter than that of the traditional phone services,' Mr Kwan said, without giving its current arpu.