A recent Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report found that a majority of businesses still use a fixed-line phone service as their main form of voice communication, but one observer has claimed that VoIP will be prevalent across SMEs by 2010.
In its most recent Telecommunications Today report, ACMA found that 77 percent of businesses rely on a fixed-line PSTN service as their primary form of voice communication.
According to ACMA "only 19 percent [of SMEs] consider a mobile phone to be their main form of communication".
However, Waqas Javed, senior mobile and wireless analyst at research firm IDC, told ZDNet.com.au today that by 2010, he expects there to be more VoIP than fixed-line connections in small business.
"Although there's not a trend towards overall market adoption just yet, we can see that PSTN use is definitely in decline," he said.
"A number of smaller operators have been trying to advance VoIP in the small business space for some time now but with the fixed-line business now declining, the big players are starting to move in as well — from there I can see VoIP adoption growing rapidly," said Javed.
The IDC analyst said that the growing demand for VoIP among SMEs coupled with the entry of larger telcos into the space will result in the launch of "many more" triple-play services, which will "enable this growth in VoIP over the next couple of years".
