Just received a release from telecommunications equipment manufacturer DeTeWe with a dire warning for national telecom operators: You're going the way of the dinosaurs -- those little furry VoIP providers are going to take over your ecological niche!
The release contains a quote from DeTeWe's CEO Nadahl Shocair. Is he an alarmist? Judge for yourself:
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“2004 laid the foundation for widespread take-up of VoIP, with a range of new product releases and service announcements that meanVoIP is set to be a reality this year for consumers and enterprises both large and small. In the US alone, the market is likely to double over the next year from the current 700,000 subscribers to more than 2 million as broadband connections become even more common in US homes.
"The time of national operators is over. Increasingly, they’re starting to look like dinosaurs against the nimble, global players that are entering the VoIP market. We’re going to see a shakeout on the scale of the commotion caused by the budget airlines when they launched a few years back. Up to 40% of the free cashflow currently generated by the telecoms operators could disappear by 2007, as a direct result of the move to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
"Even enterprise customers that aren't candidates to deploy IP telephony now are buying VoIP-capable phone systems from us for the future.”
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Interesting comparison with the airline industry and the rise of the budget operators. Is it applicable to telecommunications? I don't pretend to know.
The IP communications trend does seem like a potential threat to the big operators, but transformation and adaptation is also an option. Maybe the dinosaurs can find ways to survive as crocodiles and iguanas?
AB -- 2/21/05
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