Consumers and companies opt for VoIP

IP telephony solutions of all kinds are now being taken up by both businesses and households, In-Stat has said.

The market intelligence company recently predicted that almost four out of every five US businesses will be using VoIP phones by 2013.

David Lemelin, practice leader and senior analyst at market intelligence company In-Stat, said: "Many flavours of VoIP exist and are being embraced by entire enterprises as well as individual users".

Broadband-based VoIP applications are particularly "attractive" to both employers and employees, he explained, because they can make flexible working schemes easier to initiate.

Mr Lemelin predicted that all businesses will be using IP telephony "in one form or another" by the end of the decade.

He said that this could be "something as simple as" voice-enabled instant messaging (IM) or something much more sophisticated, like an IP PBX or hosted telephony solution.

The VoIP provider market will even out this year after two years of sharp drops in revenue, Dell'Oro Group predicted recently.

The networking and telecommunications industry's information source expects VoIP subscriber growth to accelerate in 2010 as economic conditions improve.