Tesco: Stick to Groceries

British supermarket chain, Tesco recently announced that they are adding a VoIP service offering through their Tesco Telcoms subsiderary. Not really that shocking huh? Of course not everyone is hopping on the IP Telephony bandwagon these days. What was found to be interesting was this quote from Alex Freudmann, a commercial manager at the company,

Because Tesco’s VoIP traffic will travel over the public Internet, it won’t be able to guarantee the quality of service. However, the company claims that the quality will be better than traditional fixed-line telephony because of the data compression rates it uses. “Assuming you have a reasonable phone, the sound quality is better than a landline. We tested the service in customer test groups and had favorable results. We minimized the data feed–it’s compressed as much as possible. It even works very well over narrowband,” Freudmann said.

Statements such as this will continue to come about as more and more companies try to get into the IP Telephony space. What is unfortunate about statements like the one made above is that it clearly over promises. This is a traditional business “no-no” never over promise, then under deliver. By stating that the call quality is “better than a landline” this Alex obviously has never used the service. I have used dozen’s of VoIP services over the past two years, and none of them were “better then a lanline” and certainly none of them “worked well over narrowband” or dial-up. Instead of educating consumers about the IP Telephony and VoIP, yet another company has taken the easy way out and made promises they will not be able to keep.Garrett Smith