Stuart Corner
Friday, 21 December 2007 04:52
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
The Australian Communications & Media Authority (ACMA) has published the results of research into the supply and demand of VoIP services in Australia, saying it needs to understand new services to guide its regulatory decisions, but there is little in the results to offer any guidance.
Most conspicuous by its absence is any indication of what percentage of current VoIP services are considered PSTN equivalent services, because much of the ACMA's regulation centres around this distinction. And while forecasts are included for expected VoIP revenues as a percentage of total revenues, there is no indication of expected growth in user numbers or call volumes.
The ACMA found that there were 269 VoIP providers and that some 15 percent of adult consumers and 13 percent of SMEs had used VoIP, but interestingly it described this penetration figure as 'low'. For a service that is still in its infancy that seems to me like quite a reasonable uptake. The ACMA made no attempt to break down how much of this was on-net traffic, generally free, and how much of it originated or terminated on the PSTN.
The ACMA in November made it mandatory for any VoIP service in Australia that is able to both receive calls made to a public telephone number and to place calls to public telephone numbers to support calling to the 000 emergency service and the 106 service for the hearing or speech impaired.
I
asked Skype if it was going to comply and failed to receive a satisfactory answer. I asked the ACMA if this ruling applied to Skype and how, generally it was going to enforce the ruling. I received no answer at all.
In April this year the
ACMA announced that it had introduced a new number range , beginning 0550, for VoIP services that are not close substitutes for a standard phone service. It said the decision was "an important step in facilitating the evolution of voice telephony and also implements an important aspect of the government's announced strategic framework for VoIP services."
And it warned that it would "more actively monitor compliance with regard to the use of geographic numbers for local services by carriage service providers." Yet this report gives no indication on the breakdown of VoIP services that use geographic numbers v those that do not.
