U.S. Small Businesses Boost Usage of VoIP Communications

by Anton Shilov
07/27/2006 | 10:45 PM

A study by IDC has revealed that a very significant part of U.S.-based home offices already use voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) technologies to cut down long-distance calls. However, just one tenth of households without home offices are aware of services like Skype.

The number of U.S. households with income-generating or corporate home offices are more than twice as likely to implement VoIP in the next 12 months compared with households in general, a new IDC study reveals. Currently, 39.1% of corporate home offices and 23.7% of home-based businesses are interested in or using VoIP. In contrast, only 10.8% of households without home offices are VoIP aware.

“Home offices will adopt VoIP communications at a faster rate than U.S. households overall,” said Chris Hazelton, senior analyst, SMB research at IDC. “Although cost savings are important, features such as convergence with mobile phones will be increasingly important to home offices in the long run”.

Savings on long distance continue to be the key driver of initial interest in VoIP by home offices. lthough VoIP has moved beyond the very earliest adoption stage, many home office households are reluctant to use VoIP as their only telephone service, and rather add it as a second method of communication, according to the study.