Primus Canada lowers prices
A day after Shaw Communications Inc., Canada's second-largest cableco, unveiled a $55 a month Internet telephony service in Calgary, Primus Canada is dropping the price of its TalkBroadband packages by $4 to $16 a month - a move it says will offer savings as much as 68% compared with traditional telephony service - and adding more features. Primus said it wants to stoke demand for VOIP by “delivering more value”.
My take is Primus, which only has “several thousand” customers despite in the market for more than a year,, is scrambling to give the business a jolt before the cablecos - Rogers, Videotron, Shaw and Cogeco - start to gain consumer momentum. If Primus fails to execute properly and quickly, its VOIP business could easily be shunted to the background.
Its decision to lower prices suggests there could be a sense of desperation. Perhaps a good quality service has yet to resonate with consumers despite Primus being first into the VOIP market in January, 2004. There is speculation Primus could look to boost growth by pursuring Call-Net's consumer business, which includes long-distance and 300,000 traditional telephony customers.
