BT to push mobility and VoIP

The UK telecoms giant has laid out its priorities for 2006

BT is to focus heavily on promoting enterprise mobility and voice over IP (VoIP) in 2006.

Marc Patterson, vice-president and general manager for Mobile Data Services at BT Infonet, predicted voice over wireless LAN (VoWLAN) and dual-mode handsets will come to the fore, as organisations start exploring ways to port VoIP clients onto mobile devices that switch calls between Wi-Fi, 3G, Mesh and WiMax networks.

“Mobile working within the corporate campus and ‘roaming’ world will continue to grow. Corporate control over mobile working, however, and the recognition of the true costs to the corporation will be among the biggest challenges,” he said, adding that tariffs for mobile data services are almost certain to come down.

John Blake, head of IP telephony at BT Global Services, said the biggest growth in fixed-line VoIP adoption in 2006 will be within the government sector, followed by the financial and insurance industries then small and medium-sized enterprises.

The benefits of IP contact centre technology and other applications will prove the major driver in many cases, as IT managers struggle to identify potential cost savings, he added. “Aggressive per-minute pricing means that traditional toll-bypass savings are not always realised,” Blake added.