No Love For the Small Medium VoIP Service Provider!

Today’s announcement by NetGear of the release of the DG834GV, an all-in-one integrated voice gateway featuring ADSL2+ modem, router, and wireless router available only through Australian Internet Telephony and Broadband provider egin got me thinking about the lack of love mass market product vendors are showing small-medium service providers as it relates to VoIP products. Currently, many mass market vendors (Motorola, VTech, Netgear to name a few) are only producing products that are enabled with a larger VoIP Service providers service. In other words, no one can use the device unless they are using it with XYZ’s service and no other small to medium providers have the ability to offer it to their customers.

Now this tell me a few things:

1. Mass Market product vendors do not understand the present state of the market, the future of the market, and the impact of small-medium service providers on the market (current, future).
2. Mass Market product vendors do not understand the technology in the own device well enough to support more then “one customer” for the device. I say this because having hundreds or thousands of service providers using your device(s) exponetually increases the number of possible scenarios/problems they might need to support.
3. Mass Market vendors such as Linksys, D-Link, and Cisco have made booth the large and small-medium providers a priority through a variety of programs and have become the vendors of choice for the small-medium provider (with Linksys in the lead)

It is amazing that with all of the smart folks these huge companies employ there is not one within their respective organization that would champion the idea of selling to the small-medium provider (either directly or in-directly through a VAR/VAD). It is a dis-service to the hundreds of thousands of VoIP consumers and hundreds of VoIP prodviders that they do not have the same access to the innovative new products that are afforded to the large players. Maybe if more of the mass market product vendors looked to go to market with an “open” version of every device they sell (similar to Linksys, Cisco, D-Link) there would be even further growth in the VoIP industry. (Let’s face it, the mass market wants products from companies they have heard of. With the technology being rather alien to most, a brand name product offers them some comfort.)

Anyone out there reading this work for one of the mass market guys willing to comment on why there is little focus on the small-medium VoIP Service Provider and the markets they serve?

I would be interested in your thoughts on this…