UK lags EU and US on VoIP use

Companies in most European countries and in America are showing greater willingness to switch to voice communications networks than those in Britain, according to a new survey.

Research commissioned by IT services company Dimension Data found that the UK lags behind in the uptake of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) communications systems, as well as those which also integrate data sharing and transfers into the network.

Out of 390 IT managers and 524 end users across 13 countries worldwide, some 60 per cent of US firms said they used VoIP compared to just a third of British-based companies.

In addition, over half of the VoIP systems used by American businesses have been integrated into the same network used by the firm's electronic data, while again the UK falls behind with just 28 per cent having a combined system.

A similar story was reported with EU countries, with only Switzerland falling behind the UK on VoIP adoption, while Germany was reported to have exactly the same rate of VoIP use.

According to Steve Blood, a research vice-president at industry analyst Gartner, the reasons for this disparity are that the majority of the technology comes from the US, where IP telephony has been driven by poor quality indoor mobile phone services.