Is VoIP ready for prime time?
Published: 15 Jul 2003 11:43 BST
VoIP slips away from big business
To help them survive, many VoIP providers are turning to small and medium-size businesses. There too, they are finding problems. They've discovered that larger companies are shying away from VoIP because it costs too much to replace their telephone systems, or they've already built one of their own.
"VoIP in the enterprise space has not moved the market," said Robert Thompson, a top executive at the Enterprise Networks Division of Siemens Information and Communication Networks.
Concerns about Y2K are partly to blame, he said in prepared remarks released Tuesday. Many businesses already upgraded their phone networks to prepare for the disaster that never happened. As a result, there are only a few eager to upgrade again to VoIP systems, he said.
Also, Thompson agrees with cable companies about the value of the technology delivered by VoIP.
"The value...has been: at the best I get the same thing," Thompson said. "At the worst I might have less features, less functionality, less reliability."
But smaller businesses, which are nimbler in leaping to new technologies, are an eager and surprising market for VoIP.
"Small to medium-sized business is definitely picking up the IP telephony banner," said Richard De Soto, vice president of Altigen Communications, which sells VoIP equipment almost exclusively to smaller businesses.
"Large companies have a large capital investment, so they can't afford to get rid of their old phone systems," De Soto said. "But smaller companies have older, analogue-based systems. That's the customer that's migrating to VoIP."
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