Enterprise VoIP slowing due to economy, says In-Stat

Trying to paint a glass-half-full picture, In-Stat says the struggling economy will slow the growth of VoIP in U.S. business markets, but deployments remain "wide-ranging at mitigated levels." Whatever that means, 32 percent of enterprise-sized businesses say that the economic situation has slowed VoIP deployment.

According to the analyst firm, slightly more than one in three U.S. businesses that have deployed VoIP use it exclusively, while many more businesses use VoIP as a partial voice solution, particularly among larger businesses.

In-Stat is predicting there is significant room for growth among businesses who have already adopted VoIP; we are feeling the phrase "hybrid deployment" here, with legacy/paid-for TDM gear and phones going away as parts die or become too expensive to keep online. Smaller firms/SOHOs are tending to go with an all-IP solution, which makes sense since they don't have the big investment/multiple offices headaches to deal with.

On the carrier side, the interesting news is broadband telephony remaining the most common carrier-based business VoIP solution with revenues over $1.1 billion in 2008. Hosted IP Centrex solutions chalked up $857 million within the U.S, and 13 percent of U.S. businesses use both carrier-based and premise-based IP solutions, according to the report.

For more:
- In-stat predicts enterprise VoIP slowing. Release [1].