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ISPs Rival Pure Play VoIP Providers |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Thursday, 06 July 2006 |
A new study of the IP telephony market in Australia has
revealed that ISPs are making a strong bid to become the providers of VoIP
services.
The study, titled "ISPs: The New Vanguard of Retail Voice
Services" was carried out by research firm Market Clarity which surveyed 245
companies offering voice services in Australia.
The results showed an increasing percentage of companies are
ISPs adding VoIP services to their product offering.
The Market Clarity survey must also dug out a large number
of new providers as it reports that the VoIP service provider market is much
larger than generally realised. The research identified 169 retail VoIP
services and 42 wholesale VoIP services from a total of 182 VoIP service
providers.
Of those, more than 28 percent are ISPs. 161 voice providers
offer also offer Internet services.
"Analysts and commentators have significantly
under-estimated the number of companies entering the VoIP market in the last
two years," explained Market Clarity's founder and CEO, Shara Evans. "This
study demonstrates a very strong and accelerating adoption of VoIP by ISPs."
Evans says the mushrooming voice offering from ISPs is
attributable to the launch of wholesale VoIP services over the past 12 to 18
months.
These whitelable services make the process of implementing
and offering VoIP services to consumers a relatively straightforward way to
increase ARPU (average revenue per user).
It was interesting that the Market Clarity survey also
points to a large percentage of ISPs involved in the regular PSTN market with
37 per cent of companies offering regular phone services are again, ISPs.
"The growing number of ISPs offering voice services suggests
that the industry is looking beyond its traditional base of Internet utility
services, and is looking to reduce churn by commanding more of their customers'
telecommunications spending," said Evans.
"The number of ISPs now known to offer voice services
represents more than 29% of the 547 ISPs tracked by Market Clarity," she said.
This may also represent a serious competitive challenge to
pure-play VoIP providers, who cannot draw on other revenue streams to
cross-subsidise their services.
The report also indicates little crossover between mobile
and VoIP providers. While the sample of
245 providers included 64 companies offering mobile services, there is a
relatively low overlap between mobile services and VoIP services.
The fast growth of the VoIP market poses a challenge for
regulators, however, with VoIP providers still lagging behind the voice
services market in their membership of the mandatory TIO scheme.
Only 60.4 percent of VoIP providers are members of the TIO
scheme, the study finds, compared to 86 percent of PSTN providers and 84.4
percent of mobile service providers.
"The TIO is a key plank in telecommunications consumer
protection," Evans said. "Providers themselves are also risking a regulatory
response by ignoring or resisting their regulatory obligations."
Market Clarity found that there are 61 companies in the
sample of 245 whose business activities include reselling carriage services
(for example, VoIP service providers offering low-cost PSTN termination) who
qualify as "regulatory refuseniks," says Evans.
The 42-page report analyses the activities, services and
regulatory status of 245 companies offering voice services in Australia and costs $995 (ex-GST) www.marketclarity.com.au.
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