John Linton
One of the things that has surprised me this year has been the acceleration of VoIP usage by Exetel's own customers and the general increase in the number of people I know who have moved their businesses to VoIP over the past few months. As someone who has been around since the time that "VoIP will take off this year" was first being declaimed at international conferences (in the mid 1990s) and then declaimed every year since that time - I think I'm now convinced that VoIP really has "taken of".
Exetel, as a company, has only used VoIP for over 18 months now and I and most other Exetel employees only use VoIP on our home telephones. I don't even think about the 'quality' of the VoIP calls - as far as I can see the quality is the same as any other call I've ever made. I'm sure this doesn't come as "news" to anybody in the communications industry all of whom probably have used VoIP longer than I have. What has surprised me is that two very conservative business acquaintances have told me over the past few days just how delighted they are to have changed their companies to VoIP and how unbelievable the quality is.
What's more surprising is the 'surge' in VoIP applications from Exetel's ADSL users over the past few weeks - to around ten times what has been the case for the past 2 years or so. The change is so great and so sudden that it's as if someone turned a switch. I've actually contacted several Exetel users who have applied for VoIP over the past month to ask them why they have made the move and been, yet again, surprised by their answers. I contacted 20 users (who hadn't also got a Naked ADSL2 service) and the reasons given for activating VoIP in their homes was:
7 - tried the equipmentless VoIP option first and that convinced them VoIP was as good as PSTN and much cheaper
5 - switched from another VoIP provider for better/more reliable quality
4 - were convinced by friends/family that VoIP was no hassle and saved a lot of money
2 - simply wanted to play with it to see what it was like
1 - was set up by their son who was going overseas for a year and wanted his parents to call him without costing a lot of money
1 - was given a VoIP capable modem and decided to try it out
Not a very representative 'sample' and the results didn't tell me much/anything but the conclusion I drew was that there has now been so much talk about VoIP for so long that there isn't any real 'fear factor' holding people back from making the obvious and substantial savings.
The real advantages of VoIP for businesses go far beyond much lower call costs of course and are so vast that it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that Exetel couldn't still be in business if we hadn't implemented a VoIP/Asterisk PBX. None of my friends who have implemented VoIP in their businesses have gone very much beyond, in all but two cases, at all beyond simply making VoIP outbound calls to save call costs. They have many pleasant surprises available to them in the future.
I would think that all ISPs have seen the same dramatic increase in the use of VoIP and perhaps have seen it long before Exetel has. I'm not sure what any of this means in terms of the underlying assumptions of costing ADSL and associated old style wire line rental and call revenue contributions but it will mean something over the coming year for carriers with large PSTN line rental and call revenue bases.
There is almost no reason why any person, business or private, would continue to use a wire line and PSTN telephone service rather than a VoIP or mobile service (something that has been said for several years but now apparently being agreed with by people who previously ignored the benefits). With the continuing decrease in the cost of ATA/VoIP Modem hardware the last 'barrier' to a much wider acceptance of VoIP now seems inevitable - although I'm making this statement 13 years after I first heard it.
Naked ADSL should also 'take off' as there really is (outside a tiny percentage of 'medical emergency' scenarios) absolutely no reason for anyone to keep paying for a PSTN service.
I wonder if 2008 really is, finally, going to be the year VoIP really happened?