Naked DSL driving herd of consumers to VoIP: IDC

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 14:29

IT Industry - Market

The movement from traditional voice telephony to Internet based VoIP services in homes is picking up steam, driven by the emergence of Naked DSL, according to a new report.

According to the IDC report titled Residential VoIP: Let's Get Naked, the inhibitors that had previously been slowing the uptake of residential VoIP in Australia have been overcome in the past 6-12 months. IDC lists the high cost of broadband, poor quality of service, number portability and high complexity as the key issues.

However, the regulatory enabling of Naked DSL, which enables service providers to offer VoIP over DSL copper lines without the unwanted additional bundled PSTN telephone line rental cost, has lit a fire under the residential VoIP market, according to IDC.
 
"A key driver to this is the bundled sell of broadband and VoIP together and more recently, the offering of Naked DSL services, which is a business model that has been enabled via regulation more than technical capabilities," said David Cannon, Program Manager, Telecommunications at IDC.

According to the IDC report, throughout 2007, the Australia residential VoIP market enjoyed strong growth. At the end of CY07, there were an estimated 285,000 residential VoIP subscribers with an estimated value of AUD$40.67 million.

IDC also believes VoIP offers a superior service to the PSTN.

"Scalability and flexibility are synonymous with VoIP. The functionality that VoIP delivers, even at its early stages of maturity, supersedes that of the PSTN. This means that VoIP is ultimately a better product that also enables fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) and unified communications (UC)," the report states.