Convergence Bulletin

Below you can read comment from the illume team, and find out where we are speaking and see some of the comment that has been published recently in newspapers.

The June Numbers - A marked slowdown in growth

A very modest growth over the past 3 months is leading some to speculate on the true potential of hosted VoIP. Put in context with the previous quarters spectacular growth this may simply be down to a re-grouping of strategy. We will look forward to the next 3 months with interest.

State of the Nation - June 08

During May, illume travelled the length and breadth of the country to carry out a series of face-to-face interviews with most of the key service providers currently operating in the hosted VoIP marketplace.

The consensus (with very few exceptions) is that the UK’s hosted VoIP market has not met the expectations it set itself a few years back. This is not to suggest that the technology or market is flawed, merely that some of the hurdles to be overcome were bigger and more troublesome that originally anticipated.

We also noted (and again this confirmed that the technology chosen was a largely irrelevant), that all the vendors experienced virtually identical issues operationally and commercially. [more of this article]

BT’s Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) : QoS at last? – June 08

The introduction of QoS is seen as an important feature by BT, allowing a more sympathetic network for VoIP and other time sensitive applications such as video streaming.

The conclusion to be drawn is that whilst LLU operators already have innovative products for specific markets, i.e. "Voice Ready" Premium Broadband product from suppliers such as Tiscali, BT’s range of QoS enabled WBC products with its (eventual) comprehensive national coverage will offer more opportunities to more Service Providers than ever before ­ if the price is right. [more of this article]

Porting on the Up? ­ June 08

The regulator has given the industry a set of targets to (in essence), create a central database of ported numbers (fixed and mobile) and to ensure that the database is populated accordingly.

This database has to be up and running by the 31st of December 2008 with all ported mobile numbers in it by 1st Sept 2009 and all ported fixed line numbers in it by 31st December 2012.

From our discussion with Service Providers, we ask whether the point is being missed – is it the process rather than the repository that needs fixing? [more of this article]