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ADSL - the VoIP killer
Weak link in reliability chain
Over half of UK businesses are avoiding VoIP 'cos their ADSL broadband connections to branch offices aren't up to scratch, according to research coming out of Enterprise-VoIP specialists Viatel.
Viatel hired Omniboss to talk to 200 IT Decision Makers to find out why more companies aren't using VoIP, and discovered that 54 per cent have not touched VoIP, with almost 70 per cent of those citing unreliable voice quality as the overriding factor preventing them switching to IP, with expensive leased lines being seen as the only alternative - thus limiting VoIP to large enterprises that already have an extensive data infrastructure.
It's certainly not that smaller companies don't want VoIP - 95 per cent of those without VoIP said they would jump at the chance if the call quality issues could be resolved.
Viatel's point, of course, is that those issues can be resolved though the use of uncontested ADSL.
Of course, something as simple as reconfiguring ADSL routers to prioritise traffic could also work.
But the original driver for VoIP, cost savings, is not as compelling as it once was with the cost of voice communications dropping across the board - arguably because of the pressure that VoIP systems have put on pricing. Today much of the advantage of VoIP is in its ability to integrate with other systems, but that's a much harder sell than the cheaper phone calls that VoIP is still identified with.