Its going to be very interesting to see how the market in Australia begins to adopt the idea of getting a fixed line replacement from a mobile oriented service like Connect.
Whenever I talk to people about their telecom needs there is this constant bitching about the fixed line, its cost, and mostly its inflexibility.
People need mobility - they love their mobile phone, but they also want to have a traditional landline phone number. They can do that by paying Telstra or their local carrier $40 a month just to receive a few calls - and then they are stuck when they move - its not that easy to relocate a land line.
Not only that, sure you can forward your calls from the landline to the mobile, but then you are paying the huge cost of diversions to mobiles and you get absolutely no control of who get diverted, who doesn't and if you wanted any more advanced call rules your out of luck.
What we think services like Connect will do is to really free the millions of people around the world who have had enough of landlines prices and services, but still want to have a landline - and let them manage who gets diverted to where, when and more.
There are also many people who we talk to who are using Connect as a "front end" to their mobile - so they only give out their Connect number but map that to their mobile - this means they can change their mobile number anytime they want to without having to tell their friends and business partners of a number change.
Oh, and services like Connect save you money on outgoing calls too.
Are you looking at ditching the fixed line number? Tell us more here about what you need to make the switch.
