Chariot to launch VoIP (The Age / AAP)

Australians will soon have another choice of VoIP provider if Chariot’s VoIP rollout is a success. It looks like an ADSL internet account with Chariot will be required to use the service, but they will also be supplying some hardware to enable you to use your existing phone with VoIP.

It looks like for now at least you would still have to maintain a voice account with Telstra in order to make 000 calls, but at least you wouldn’t have to pay their call rates. It would also leave you with a backup call route if the Chariot service was down for some reason.

Since the ACA dropped the price of a telco licence recently I think we’ll be seeing more ISPs positioning themselves to be able to offer phone services. This should be a bonus for the consumer as it will lead to greater competition in the home phone market, which should result in lower prices.

With a little luck some alternatives to Telstra’s speed-crippled ADSL will start appearing some and Pay TV over the internet will become available too.