Price of VoIP 'decreasing despite extra features'

The price of hosted VoIP has remained static and even decreased in some cases despite increased levels of functionality, an expert has revealed.

Robert Douglas, president of IT services provider Planet Magpie, said new features of IP telephony solutions include better integration with existing systems and a wealth of tie-ins with digital communication platforms including video conferencing.

However, even though a better product usually means higher prices, the opposite has happened when it come to VoIP, he suggested.

In general, the specialist continued, the charges set down for these services have largely stayed the same or, in some cases, actually fallen.

"This is largely due to taking advantage of virtualisation and reduced communication line costs," Mr Douglas explained.

He added that the productivity gains quicker communications - such as instant messaging and faster email delivery times - can bring means projects can be completed within shorter time-scales.

The enterprise telephony and unified communications market ended 2010 up 7.4 per cent compared with the 12 months previously, according to Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS (IP multimedia subsystem) at Infonetics Research.