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The telecommunications industry is in a state of continuous change due to the economy, competition and new technologies.  The trend towards VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and cell phones has decreased the long-distance revenues significantly.  With VOIP, customers are able to have a more unified communications system that has the ability to deliver phone calls, faxes, voice mail, email, web-conferencing and more in a number of ways to any handset, including cell phones.  The reduction of costs associated with delivering voice and data communications over a single network, is very appealing to the telecom industry.  At the same time, local phone companies, led by Verizon and AT&T, are laying the fiber-optic cable directly to the neighborhood and even into the home and office in order to retain customers with promises of ultra-high-speed Internet connections and enhanced entertainment offerings online.  This is the big telco’s way of fighting back.  If cell phone owners are dropping their landlines, while VOIP over cable takes more landline customers away, then the best weapon that traditional telco’s can use in their battle for market share is the Internet.  AT&T and its peers are focusing on bundled service packages which will combine wireless accounts, very high-speed Internet access and entertainment such as video on demand and TV via IP, in addition to VOIP or landlines.  Further, the traditional telco’s look towards creating new value-added services controlled via cell phones and/or the Internet such as online services that monitor home security, services that adjust home energy usage or services that monitor the needs of elderly family members at home.  These are just a few examples of the potential to build new revenues and stop customer turnover.

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