MagicJack And The FCC Loopholes

[retiredfpl]

Check out this article....very interesting and disturbing.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1355931 ... urce=yahoo

[cell14]

There is not much disturbing here.The fact that magic jack is a crooked business has been demonstrated over and over again. The fact that Magic Jack provides a miserable service not worth a penny is known to just about everyone who tried out decent and cost effective VOIP providers. No news here.
But Magic jack has no competitive advantage because it does not charge certain fees and taxes because other VOIP providers do not do that either.
And " copperfield research" is almost as shady and unreliable as Magic Jack.

[SteveHC]

Check out this article....very interesting and disturbing.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1355931 ... urce=yahoo

- It's ALL conjecture. And the author readily admits that he's shorting the stock.

BTW - *I* believe that not only is MJ competing *very* effectively in its market, but that it will continue to do so even *if* the FCC and the individual states wind up requiring VOIP providers to start paying the fees that regular landline and cellular providers have to pay. MJ, through its parent company, has certain very important technical network advantages that many (if not most) other VOIP providers do *not* have.

[SteveHC]

There is not much disturbing here.The fact that magic jack is a crooked business has been demonstrated over and over again. The fact that Magic Jack provides a miserable service not worth a penny is known to just about everyone who tried out decent and cost effective VOIP providers. No news here.
But Magic jack has no competitive advantage because it does not charge certain fees and taxes because other VOIP providers do not do that either.
And " copperfield research" is almost as shady and unreliable as Magic Jack.

- Since the original Copperfield "report" was issued, MJ's financials have actually been *excellent* and its stock price has *increased* quite considerably. So far, it would appear that a *very* large number of consumers seem to be satisfied with MJ and that objectively the company is actually doing quite well. The fact that some (if not many) people don't care for the company's "customer service" or policies/procedures is not relevant to the article that the original poster provided a link to.

Don't get me wrong - I fully agree that MJ as a VOIP provider leaves much to be desired. But regardless, the company appears to be doing quite well from a metrics and financial perspective - and I suspect that will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.

[cell14]

[ But regardless, the company appears to be doing quite well from a metrics and financial perspective - and I suspect that will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.

Oh, I absolutely agree with you. In this country, you do not have to provide good service/product and you can still make gigabucks and vice verse, you can be excellent and still go down. It's about the survival of the fittest, not about the survival of the best.

[SteveHC]

In this country, you do not have to provide good service/product and you can still make gigabucks and vice verse, you can be excellent and still go down. It's about the survival of the fittest, not about the survival of the best.

- EXACTLY. And not just in this country, but throughout the world now. Business -both large and small - is and always has been strictly a "numbers game" and it's gotten even more so over the decades. It will be very interesting to see what MJ's next quarterly looks like, I think they release the info in about a week or two.

But I *will* say this:

Their network of servers and switches seems to have become MUCH more reliable over the past 6-12 months, in spite of the system's incredibly high degree of automation. IF their next product release goes off as planned, and IF they were to raise their annual service fee enough to enable them to offer "free" connection to ALL exchanges (with the possible exception of Alaska) while still maintaining their profit margin, they would probably become the #1 consumer VOIP provider in the U.S. within a few months (but they'd probably have to develop separate "business" accounts with a different fee structure for them, which I doubt they'll want to do, so they'll probably just continue to plod along with things as they are for a while longer yet).

But whatever they do they'd better do it quickly. If they don't, by the end of this year they might see themselves getting clobbered by Republic Wireless and possibly even FreedomPop (assuming MJ truly intends on offering a discounted 4G Internet service bundle). Republic's hybrid cellular/Wi-Fi VOIP service, at $20/month for unlimited use including minutes, SMS and 3G data, is an incredible deal (but about $250 for the required Motorola phone is a bit steep for many people) and by the end of this year they will probably have completed their development and rollout of MMS over Wi-Fi as well. And by the end of the year, FreedomPop is expected to roll out their highly discounted 4G Internet service nationwide.

[cell14]

Their network of servers and switches seems to have become MUCH more reliable over the past 6-12 months, in spite of the system's incredibly high degree of automation. IF their next product release goes off as planned, and IF they were to raise their annual service fee enough to enable them to offer "free" connection to ALL exchanges (with the possible exception of Alaska) while still maintaining their profit margin, they would probably become the #1 consumer VOIP provider in the U.S. within a few months (but they'd probably have to develop separate "business" accounts with a different fee structure for them, which I doubt they'll want to do, so they'll probably just continue to plod along with things as they are for a while longer yet).

But whatever they do they'd better do it quickly. If they don't, by the end of this year they might see themselves getting clobbered by Republic Wireless and possibly even FreedomPop (assuming MJ truly intends on offering a discounted 4G Internet service bundle)..

If that's the case it is probably more likely in the last six than 12 months- I got rid off them completely in April 2012 when it was unbearable and I remember having serious issues with MJ numbers called as late as August 2012.
It is possible that there have been some positive changes since Dan surrendered the daily operations, but over the years MJ became well known for it's very slow pace of innovation with a lot of promises broken and deadlines disregarded. Any further fee hikes might be tricky- somebody could figure out that there are better choices for the same money out there. I cannot imagine MJ going into business accounts either.
But like in today's politics, name recognition is crucial and MJ has it- unlike some excellent VOIP providers. And also, as J.Goebbels said" Every lie becomes truth if you repeat it long enough and hard enough" and MJ's relentless advertising campaign did it's job over the years. Cooperation with major retail chains helped also tremendously.
So, I think that MJ will remain a volatile thing and I would not invest a penny in their stock, but they are certainly not hopeless.

[SteveHC]

Agreed.
Time will tell if Vento actually winds up doing anything really constructive with MJ and its products or just preps it for sale.

[SteveHC]

Although some states are looking to regulate and tax VOIP providers as regular telephone service providers, about half are doing the exact OPPOSITE:

http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/ ... ation.html

[cell14]

Gosh Not another state level chaos. This should be federally regulated and nothing else. So I guess one day I will have to rent a PO Box in Colorado and send my credit card statement over there.
BTW EU countries do impose VAT on VOIP providers, if the customer and the provider are EU country residents.

[SteveHC]

Gosh Not another state level chaos. This should be federally regulated and nothing else. So I guess one day I will have to rent a PO Box in Colorado and send my credit card statement over there.
BTW EU countries do impose VAT on VOIP providers, if the customer and the provider are EU country residents.

- Yup. EU countries tax EVERYTHING, even OTA tv.

[cell14]

- Yup. EU countries tax EVERYTHING, even OTA tv.

True. I remember that from the Netherlands. It was the TV watching tax, it was due whether you watched cable or antenna TV. I never got caught for not paying it, but other people did aan the penalties were steep.