As predicted, Fizzcall party over [News]

Fizzcall launched its per call VoIP offering recently, offering 25 pence per call to various countries. I was not too enthused about the offering and I went on to say that as an investor I would not be comfortable investing in the company. You can read the earlier post here.

I posted the earlier article on Sep 10 and in less than 20 days the observations are coming true. Fizzcall is terminating its services from October 10. The company website mentions that their supplier (BT) is ceasing to provide services to them and hence they cannot offer services. Obviously, they have stopped accepting new registrations. But if you have credits in your Fizzcall account, you could still use them till October 10.

This event highlights two important points:

1. Business Continuity Planning (BCP) - It highlights the lack of BCP at Fizzcall. Relying overly only on one supplier was not the best idea from the beginning. This is the price you have to pay if you rely too heavily on one supplier.
2. Business Model - It also attests the weakness in the business model of the company. If the business model was sound enough, Fizzcall would have managed to find an alternate supplier. I am sure before making this decision to terminate services, the company would have tried its best to find an alternate supplier. The fact that they could not find any other supplier indicates that the offering was not financially sound.

It definitely is disheartening to see a VoIP service go down, but it provides important lessons to be learnt for the others. I hope the others learn from these mistakes and evolve stronger.

Technorati Tags: Business Model, Fizzcall, Deadpan, VOIP, Unlimited Calls, Untimed Calls, BCP