Forrester backs telcos to win the VoIP revolution

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 12 October 2005 16:48

Business IT - Technology

Forrester Research is predicting that traditional telcos, not the new VoIP start-ups will emerge triumphant from the transition to IP based telephony.

In a report on VoIP in Western Europe Forrester predicts that "VoIP pure plays will fail to survive as independent companies, because they don't offer a truly disruptive and transformational service and they lack the key advantages of the incumbents." According to Forrester, telcos like BT and France Telecom have the chance to keep dominating the future voice markets as long as they continue with their proactive and innovative VoIP response strategies." However, it says that, "To avoid the predicted upcoming telecom power shift, incumbent telcos must fully wake up and restructure their business, including their innovation activities."

In Forrester's view, VoIP adoption will certainly help trigger sweeping changes in voice pricing models across the industry, but this will most likely not lead to the major industry disruptions foreseen by VoIP pure play proponents,  at least not on the retail side of the business.