According to a study by Forrester Research, European telcos will maintain their dominance as voice carriers despite the growth of pure play VoIP providers like Vonage and Skype. The study cites the pure plays' lack of transformational and disruptive technology as well as the actions of proactive European telcos like BT and France Telecom, which have aggressively pursued VoIP services. VoIP adoption in Europe will move slowly because only 1 percent of Europeans use VoIP frequently, a whopping 70 percent of consumers don't even know what VoIP is and Europe has a relatively low broadband take-up. Forrester expects VoIP to capture 30 percent of the residential fixed voice market in 2010 but won't approach 100 percent until 2020.
The study also reassures telcos that VoIP services will not always be free but will continue to restructure the pricing paradigm of voice delivery services. Forrester says the hype surrounding VoIP pure plays is reminiscent of the UMTS hype, dot-com, and telecom bubble days.
For more on the European VoIP market:
- check out this article from Tekrati