VoIP Market in Europe is Least 2 Years Behind US

Recent research carried on European SMEs - in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands is revealing their perceptions and experiences with business VoIP. Parallels were found between current European markets and the status of the US market in 2005. Identical research was also carried out in the US.

David Quirk, CEO of C21 Communications , said: “The US market in 2005, saw traditional operators lose their market leadership in VoIP services to non-traditional operators. We advise European operators to learn this lesson and act quickly to avoid a similar situation.”
C21 Communications is a VoIP solution provider and exclusive distributor of Topex products in the UK.

Over the past 18 months we've witnessed incumbent US operators to be indecisive or make a catalogue of missteps that have allowed non-traditional operators like Vonage and Skype to wrestle away control of the market. Since 2005 however Vonage, Skype and other VoIP-only competitors have carried out aggressive VoIP marketing campaigns. Today the non-traditional operators lead the US VoIP market with 23 percent and the traditional operators trail at 10 percent.

Extremely similar results to the US market's makeup 18 months ago are to be found in Germany:
• 64% of German SMEs are interested in VoIP services
• 32% of SMEs consider traditional German telcos as VoIP providers
• Only 15% of SMEs are aware of the advanced features through VoIP
The key lesson to draw is that German SMEs are interested in VoIP and if you do not pro-actively promote your IP products to them, they will buy VoIP services from one of the growing number of non-traditional voice providers instead.

From the research found there is a substantial untapped market in Germany with 70 percent of SMEs interested or very interested in VoIP. Whereas in Europe overall, nearly 64 percent of SMEs had no or little interest in VoIP services.
Despite the strong interest in Germany, the market remains largely uneducated about the benefits of IP voice services with 84 percent of German SMEs primarily viewing VoIP as a way to make inexpensive calls. Only 15 percent of the market primarily consider VoIP as a means to acquire advanced voice features that can replace an expensive on-site PBX.
Research found that currently traditional operators lead the German VoIP market with 32 percent of SMEs regarding them as the main business VoIP provider, compared with only 8 percent favouring non-traditional operators.

In the more mature US market, only 43 percent of SMEs primarily view VoIP as a way to make cheap calls, while about 20 percent perceive VoIP as offering more advanced voice features, and 20 percent identify VoIP as a way to more easily and economically manage the enterprise network.

The UK's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are leading the way when it comes to adopting IP telephony systems, a new report claims.

Research from BT Business found that 25 per cent of the UK's SMEs currently use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. However, the report found that this is expected to increase rapidly in the next year.

In 12 months time 48 per cent of UK SMEs say that they plan to use VoIP services. Companies with between two and ten employees are particularly likely to embrace IP telephony systems - 57 percent plan to use VoIP within the next year.