eComm 2009: VoIP players talk potential profits

Can you make money from VoIP? Panelists from Jajah, Mobivox and Voxeo discussed the current market landscape and where they've been looking to grow their respective businesses. According to Mobivox VP Larry Lisser, "There are novel and compelling opportunities to make money."

As venture money dried up, consolidation hit the industry, and the broken model of revenue being generated by free calls sorted itself out, VoIP providers have had to innovate to find working, revenue-generating business models. Complicating matters has been belt-tightening by larger corporations, but this has been offset by mobile services wanting to add more applications without more capital spending.

Jajah boasted of the ability to offer white-label services to landline providers, enabling them to "make back" some of their lost long distance revenue, while wireless providers want to find a way to expand services to new areas without buying spectrum or building new towers. They're also making money as the VoIP-outsource player for brands like Match.com and Yahoo.

Mobivox has moved outside the box of the Tier 1 North American market to look for customers throughout the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) space. Mobile VoIP and VoIP-based application services are expected to bring new customers "out of the woodwork."

For more:
- Wall Street Journal's Venture Capital Dispatch blog.

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