Primus TalkBroadband Updates Pricing, Features to Compete
Looks like Primus is getting set to compete before Vonage and others come to town. The press release from Canada Newswire (brought to my attention by Mark Evans) has the scoop:
- reiterate their new service areas
- announce 911 service
- introduction of an Unlimited Bundle for $45.95 that includes calling anywhere in the US and Canada and all local features
The TalkBroadband web pages haven't been updated yet, and there are a few other details in the full post.
The base price of both business and residential service has been lowered with purchase of voice gateway hardware. Uh huh. So the base price for residential is $15.95 (as opposed to $19.95, a $4 savings), and the price of the gateway is $139.95. By my math, that means you would need to keep the service for almost 3 years before you made up the purchase cost.
I talked previously about how Vonage's feature set is much stronger, and their unlimited bundle is $45.99. Other than having a jump on Vonage and being a Canadian company, it would seem tough for Primus to compete.
Of course, having chosen Primus for our home service, we're somewhat locked in because of the phone numbers, so perhaps this is what Primus is counting on (hint: that's not good enough). It will be interesting to see about number portability issues, and I may phone Vonage just to ask about this.
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Comments
LNP
As a CLEC, doesn't Primus have to adhere to LNP rules? Thereby allowing you to take your numbers to Vonage?
I just called
Theoretically, yes, Primus should have to adhere to LNP rules.
I just called the Vonage number (1-877-272-0528) and they are not live yet (as of April 5/2004). I got forwarded to Edison, NJ, and was told to try back in a couple of days. The agent I spoke to seemed to think that the launch would likely be Thursday or Friday of this week.