Let us tell you a story.
Back in May, a Canadian company — Fido Solutions, which is owned by Rogers Communications Inc. — took steps to charge a small fee for its customer support services at its call centers. Yes: A service that used to be provided for free when customers paid their monthly bill just became billable. The new service fee, which costs $10, charged customers for simply calling in to make a payment, update contact information or payment method, or reset a voicemail password.
The decision to turn this unpaid service into a premium one was seen largely as a cost-saving measure, and as a way to improve customer service at call centers when overflow was occurring during peak periods. With most of those services available online, the company believed that it was easier to make small changes to customer accounts online as opposed to calling in to speak to an agent to handle them.
At the end of every year, we analyze data collected by 
WebRTC,the new in-browser framework for real-time video and audio communication, is getting a lot of attention lately. Some people feel it has the potential to cause major disruption throughout the telco world. They figure: If every web browser can be a soft-phone or VoIP client, that’s a game changer. Others see it as a neat technology that’s only an incremental improvement. They figure: Browsers can already do all of this with plug-ins, and while it’s better to be free of plug-ins, that’s a minor problem.
