Telcos to face tougher competition from VoIP

Stuart Corner
Friday, 26 February 2010 19:16

Business IT - Networking

In its half year results Telstra made much of the sudden decline in PSTN revenues. VoIP's contribution that to decline is still tiny but the latest initiative from wholesale VoIP service provider, Symbio Networks, could make VoIP significantly more competitive.

Symbio Networks presently provides VoIP services sold 'white label' by some 60 channel partners, the largest being the closely related MyNetFone with about 70.000 customers. It claims to carry over one billion minutes of traffic per month through its operations in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

However, according to technical director, Rene Sugo, the uptake of VoIP, especially in the business market, is being held back significantly by the difficulty VoIP providers have in porting customers' telephone numbers - enabling them to use their existing numbers with their new VoIP service.

For 'category C' customers - business with large blocks of numbers and complex arrangements the process can take up to eight weeks at present, according to Sugo, and lacks predictability.

"This means the VoIP provider has to install the VoIP service first and then arrange the port. Customers have to use, and pay, for both systems during the cutover period," he said.

Rather than go through the pain of this process, many small business retain their old telephone lines for incoming calls and use their new VoIP service for outgoing calls only.

But according to Sugo, "More and more people are wanting to reduce the double cost, even big customer with 30 or 60 channel ISDN trunks want to port their service and get rid of the [ISDN] because that is when they really start to make savings."

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