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Business ofcom voip

Ofcom market research

Had an interesting meeting with the Ofcom market research team.  This is the team responsible for the Annual Communications Market Report which is a must read if you are in our game.

The meeting was arranged by Ofcom’s Chris Rowsell because the VoIP service provider  industry, via trade body ITSPA, had expressed concern that the VoIP content of last year’s report showed a decline in consumer use of the technology.  This was not the actual experience of the ITSPA membership so this year we wanted to try and help make sure that the research that was conducted was more accurate.

After the meeting I did come away with a certain degree of sympathy for Ofcom.  It is very difficult to come up with an easy definition for VoIP that can be understood by the general public so that accurate research can be conducted. 

It didn’t really help that some of the example service providers used by Ofcom in the research questionnaire were of services that no one in the room had ever heard of. If industry experts could not answer what chance Joe Public?

Another interesting part of the mix is that the only bit of the Annual Report that Ofcom is required to cover under statute is the TV market. This means that the mobile/fixed line telephony/internet bit is optional and the regulator is only interested in covering bits that might affect the legislative decision making process. So consumer VoIP is of interest to them but not business VoIP.

As a Business to Business VoIP provider Timico, along with most ITSPs in the UK is only interested in the business market numbers. This is somewhat disappointing to the industry which is left without a particularly accurate metric of its size.

We left the meeting with a some positive actions. Ofcom is quite happy to take on board suggestions from ITSPA as to how the research can be improved and although there isn’t much time this year to get it done, this is something we will take onboard. Secondly, in the absence of their own data, Ofcom appears to be willing to publish the numbers collected by ITSPA member and Communications Consultancy Illume which gathers basic industry subscriber numbers on a quarterly basis.

Hopefully we will be able to help improve  the VoIP aspect of the report this year.

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

2 replies on “Ofcom market research”

All Ofcom has to do is listen to the people, read the blogs, read the forums, and they will soon see where market failure is happening. They seem to live in a dreamworld of their own. If the Carter report comes out on the 16th and nothing has been done about Next gen access and the plumbing for it then I think the blame can be laid at the door of Ofcom who are supposed to monitor BT and the national state of comms. Some ISPs are struggling to supply the people with what they need to remain engaged in digital britain. Anyone not living on top of an exchange has not much chance of keeping up with the innovations brought about with web 2.0 apps. Market failure in rural areas. Where is Ofcom? WTF is it doing?
How did you keep your temper when still in the same room as them? easy I suppose, they are probably all great people. Shame that in so many departments there are such great guys but no muscle and no power to bring about change and progress? Just as ever my humble opinon. Great blog post again Tref.
chris

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