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broadband Business UC

USA market for VoIP 3 years ahead of the UK #8×8

Availability of high speed broadband has driven the market for hosted VoIP telephony in the USA which is 3 years ahead of the UK.

Had dinner last week with Huw Rees, VP Business Development of 8×8. If you don’t know them, 8×8 are the largest provider of Over The Top VoIP services in the USA with over half a million subscribers. That’s almost as big as the whole UK market.

What’s more 8×8 are putting on subscribers at a terrific rate – over a thousand new businesses a quarter at approximately 18 seats per business. This is all public domain stuff. 8×8 is a publicly quoted company that turns over around $120m and with a Market Cap of $800m. Overall gross margin is 71% with GM on services up at 80% which is how they can achieve the market valuation.

This business performance is achieved in two ways. Firstly all 8×8’s technology was developed in house. They don’t have large licenses and royalties to fork out. In fact 8×8 owns a  lot of patents. Secondly everything is low touch, automated and web based including the marketing. They do have an inbound sales team because business customers like to talk to a real person before committing to this kind of technology.

The final interesting point to make is that 8×8 saw a trigger point that stimulated business growth and this was the availability of  high speed broadband – better quality and more reliable broadband connectivity. The USA went through this milestone around 3 or maybe four years ago. We are only now seeing it happen with the BT rollout of FTTC.

Since we started to sell FTTC at Timico we have seen it become a lot easier to sell VoIP seats. Reliability of the serviced is much better. VoIP even becomes a lever to sell people FTTC – they call in for one and we sell ’em both.

Our model as a one stop shop is different to that of 8×8 who pass on the connectivity and hosting revenues. The 8×8 success in the USA does bode well for the rest of us over in Blighty.

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

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

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