UK businesses are trailing the rest of the world in adopting IP telephony and other unified communication tools.

Only 33 per cent of UK companies are using voice over IP (VoIP), while 28 per cent use videoconferencing and none have adopted mobile VoIP according to a survey by vendor Dimension Data.

The average uptake for the 13 surveyed nations was 37 per cent for IP telephony and 36 per cent for video conferencing, although investment in mobile VoIP is low across the world.

Dimension Data predicts that VoIP will figure in most corporate agendas over the next two years.

'The research indicates that unified communications and associated technologies are more widely adopted than anticipated,' said Rob Lopez, managing director for solutions at Dimension Data.

'Whilst organisations have been reluctant or unable to adopt these technologies as a corporate standard, clients around the world are telling us that consumers are bringing these technologies into the workplace.'

Datamonitor carried out the survey on behalf of Dimension Data, interviewing IT managers and users from 13 countries across Europe, America and Asia.