Voice of the Customer

TMCnet - The World's Largest Communications and Technology Community
 
| More
Voice of the Customer Featured Article Archive

[January 31, 2006]

Vonage launches VOIP service in Central Oregon

(Bulletin, The (Bend, OR) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jan. 31--National Internet phone provider Vonage has officially launched voice-over-Internet service in Central and Eastern Oregon, the company announced Friday.

Vonage is the latest provider of voice-over-Internet protocol, or VOIP, in Central Oregon's increasingly crowded telecommunications market. The technology uses high-speed Internet connections to transfer phone signals.

The launch is effective immediately within the 541 area code. The area includes Deschutes, Crook, and Jefferson counties, and cities such as Bend, Redmond, Prineville, Hood River and The Dalles.

"We're giving consumers in the Central Oregon region broadband telephone service plans they cannot get from their local or long distance phone companies," said Vonage America President Michael Tribolet in a written statement, referring to the company's inclusion of unlimited calling within the United States with most of its service plans.

In addition to some smaller providers, BendBroadband announced earlier this month that it launched VOIP service for Redmond and Terrebonne customers. The company is expected to launch Bend service early next month.

The Vonage modem was previously available to customers nationwide, but the company did not list Central Oregon as a served market on its Web site before Friday's announcement.

Several customers in Central Oregon had mail-ordered Vonage devices prior to Friday's announcement.

"It's absolutely great," said Marigale Compton of Bend, a retired financial adviser. "When you get a call, they take that message and put it on your e-mail account so you can pick it up on the computer."

"My Vonage bill is half of what my phone bill used to be," said Alison Miner of Bend, an art shop owner.

However, some calls drop out occasionally, she said.

BendBroadband isn't worried about the new VOIP competition, said Paul Azar, the company's vice president of VOIP. BendBroadband has local technical support, something that Vonage lacks, added Azar, who welcomes another VOIP player.

"With Central Oregon's phenomenal growth, it attracts competition," Azar said. "We feel that, the more choices the consumer has, the better it is for the entire industry."

Vonage plans range from $14.99 to $49.99 a month. More information can be found at www.vonage.com.

[ Back To Voice of the Customer Community's Homepage ]


FOLLOW US

FREE Voice of the Customer eNewsletter

Subscribe Now

Featured White Papers

  • Seven Best Practices for Speech Analytics: Speech analytics is valuable for identifying issues in the contact center. However, limiting its use to the contact center only considers a portion of all customer interactions and subsequently only reveals a small part of the voice of the customer. This paper discusses how organizations can optimize their Speech Analytics implementation strategy to realize the promise of this exciting technology.
  • Understanding the Voice of the Customer: Today's contact centers involve a sea of information that must be captured, processed, and distributed on a daily basis. Effective use of this information enables companies to remain competitive in an increasingly aggressive and customer centric marketplace. An overwhelming percentage of the information that circulates in a contact center's audio recordings, documents, web pages, and emails is unstructured in that it resides outside of a normal structured database and cannot be managed efficiently. These unstructured items contain valuable information, yet this information historically has been difficult to organize, categorize, and access.

Case Studies

  • Aflac: Aflac, the leading provider of guaranteed-renewable insurance turned to Autonomy to help them automate the process of monitoring their contact center agent for quality and compliance. The company now has a system that can offer continued improvement in agent quality and productivity while enhancing the customer experience. ...
  • Avaya: Avaya, a global leader in business communications, inherited 880 websites as well as numerous intranets and extranets when it was spun off from Lucent Technologies. The sheer volume and diversity of the sites and the over 500 content creators resulted in inefficient content distribution rife with divergent branding, messaging, and product information. ...

Video Showcase

    Interview with Autonomy: Rich Tehrani interviews Simon Hayhurst, SVP of Autonomy

Featured Events

  • Multichannel Analytics with Autonomy Explore: In today's world of constant connectivity there are a variety of direct and indirect channels of communication between an enterprise (or a brand) and its customers. 80% of these valuable interactions are generated in a human-friendly, unstructured format across multiple touchpoints and channels. With this ever growing mountain of information how do you extract the emerging trends and topics of interest to the enterprise? ...
  • SES Chicago 2011: Marketers and SEO professionals attend SES Chicago each year to network and learn about topics such as PPC management, keyword research, SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability and more. The conference offers 70+ sessions, intensive training workshops, and an expo floor packed with companies that can help you grow your business. While you're at it, network with peers and leading industry vendors. Programmed by the SES advisory board, you can be assured - SES content really is king! ...
 
 
| More