Verizon Clips VoiceWing VoIP Service

Verizon Communications is shutting down its VoiceWing residential Internet phone service, effective March 31.

According to a Verizon spokesperson, Verizon is alerting VoiceWing customers via e-mail, letters and outbound calls that the service will be discontinued. Customers have the option to port their phone numbers to other services.

Verizon is abandoning the low-cost service to focus more on its other digital voice services and technologies.

"This was a business decision based on a number of factors, including VoiceWing's strategic fit with our evolving portfolio of next-generation digital voice service," said Verizon spokesperson Bobbi Henson in an e-mail to Channelweb.com.

One of those new technologies is The Hub, a touchscreen home phone that connects via a broadband connection. There is also talk that Verizon will introduce VoIP service on its fiber-optic FiOS offering.

Verizon would not disclose how many customers VoiceWing brought aboard throughout its nearly five-year run, but Henson noted that "VoiceWing is a niche service that we never mass-marketed."

Additionally, Verizon has cancelled its contract with DeltaThree, a struggling VoIP provider that offered the back-end services for VoiceWing.

VoiceWing service, which launched in July 2004, enabled customers to place calls by connecting a phone to a broadband Internet connection using a small adapter.

VoiceWing suffered the same fate as AT&T's CallVantage service. AT&T stopped adding new customers to CallVantage last year.

According to Yankee Group Research Vice President Steve Hilton, the breakdown of VoiceWing is no surprise.

"From Verizon's perspective, is VoIP like top-shelf vodka or vodka in a plastic bottle?" Hilton asked in an e-mail to Channelweb.com. "Obviously, from Verizon's perspective (and correctly so), the mass market sees VoIP service as cheap repackaging of an old-fashioned product -- telephone service. And plain, old-fashioned telephone service has better margins than VoIP."