News

WiFi still a tiny part of telephony, says report

by Guy J Kewney | posted on 02 January 2008

Growth may be a guaranteed future for Voice Over WiFi (VoW) - but the figures show that even treble-digit growth rates would have to continue for years before it made a dent in traditional voice revenues.

Tell-tale snip from a New Year analysis:

According to analyst firm Telegeography, in 2006 Skype users are expected to make 13.8 billion call minutes - 80% up from 2005. However, traffic on traditional phone lines is expected to grow over the same period to 237 billion minutes.

The report, by Mark Ward, quotes Truphone (WiFi voice pioneer) as saying that established mobile telcos are reluctant to accept that WiFi hotspots could actually help their growth. James Tagg from Truphone said this was "frustrating."

He added: "If they opened up their networks it would definitely be good for the consumer and probably for the operators too. But it's a risk and it's a scary thing for an operator to do."