A joint Atug and Engin survey and a report on Fixed Voice Services Market that was released last week revealed that a number of Australian companies have dumped fixed lines in favour of VoIP and mobile. If the recent reports are to be believed, there is a clear indication that the trend to VoIP and moving away from fixed-line phones is now gathering steam.
Market Clarity, another research firm made a similar forecast that there would be a steady and continued decline of fixed phone lines as broadband adoption corrects an inflated market for second-line services.
Shara Evans, CEO, Market Clarity, said,
Businesses started buying IP PABXs or call managers several years ago and began implementing telephony over their local area network - getting QOS in place and testing out the deployment. We are just starting to get into that full swing now - and so we’re seeing businesses that no longer need as many basic access lines. Instead they are putting some of that traffic across their own data network, and in most cases that is not the public Internet, but a carrier-grade network.
This is not surprising as it is happening in many parts of the world. But is PSTN is really going away? Hmm.. I am not too convinced that it is, at least its death is not imminent. There would be declinations in fixed lines, but it cannot be complete replaced, with VoIP and all.
Read the full story here.
