Telcos take lead in VoIP provision

Traditional firms now account for 51 percent of all VoIP minutes

Telecoms carriers in Europe are now supporting more voice over IP (VoIP) minutes than providers of free PC-to-PC VoIP services such as Skype, according to new figures from broadband management firm Sandvine.

The service providers offer VoIP systems ranging from just voice to integrated “triple play” services for voice, video and data. They now account for 51 percent of all VoIP minutes, beating Skype, which has 45 percent, and other VoIP providers, which account for the rest, according to Chris Colman, Sandvine’s managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

“At Sandvine we’re in the deep packet inspection [DPI], Layer 7-aware area and most of our customers are using us to manage the cost of peer-to-peer traffic on their network,” said Colman. “We’ve been running a VoIP survey for the last quarter of 2005 – we’ve been trying to track the rising popularity of VoIP. Twelve to 18 months ago the VoIP services that were gaining popularity very quickly were Vonage in North America and Skype over here in Europe.”

Nicole Klein of analyst firm Yankee Group noted that telecoms carriers have been promoting triple-play services more heavily over the past year.

Tom Donnelly, Sandvine sales and marketing vice-president, added, “VoIP products offered by broadband service providers in Europe and North America are being taken up.”

Sandvine’s figures are based on data aggregated from its North American and European traffic management activities, covering service providers with more than six million subscribers.