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Business ofcom Regs voip

Ofcom today published its annual Communications Market Report

Ofcom today published its annual Communications Market Report. At 334 pages long it is a bit of a read but actually, at least if you are in the industry, it is very much worth ploughing through it.  It usually produces lots of interesting material to comment about so I’m probably going to pick and chose a few subjects dear to my heart over the next few days.

Last year the industry had cause to complain big time regarding Ofcom’s measurement of the growth of the VoIP market. In fact I met with the regulator to discuss this very subject earlier in the summer.

This year the report highlights the increasing popularity of VoIP, with evidence showing a growing awareness and take up of the service. According to the research, the number of UK adults using VoIP in Q1 2009 has risen to 12% and 60% of UK adults claim to know about VoIP.

The report does accept that most UK adults do not use the service citing reasons such as insufficient understanding on how it’s used, quality of service issues and competition from low-priced fixed and mobile telecoms services. However Ofcom stresses that many users are unlikely to realise that they are using VoIP technology, e.g. the BT home hub phone, and therefore usage is likely to be higher than the report suggests.

The reports also highlights a decline in the total number of UK fixed lines which is attributed to greater availability of alternative forms of communication including VoIP. The use of VoIP was also one reason attributed to the growth in business voice call volumes by 2.1% in 2008 to 89.1 billion minutes.

It is clear from the report that Ofcom are still unable to obtain genuine statistics of VoIP take-up from their current market research but at least it is progress over last year.

More when the day job allows.