Yankee Group's 2005 Technologically Advanced Family (TAF) survey reveals that the consumer VoIP market remains immature. Analysts believe that despite some gains, consumer awareness of the technology is low and confusion remains high. Bearing this out, the study found that, to this day, "nearly thirty-five percent of VoIP-aware US households do not believe that VoIP is a telephone service that can be used with a regular telephone."

 

The firm concluded that during this year, about thirty-eight percent of VoIP-aware households believe that VoIP telephony provided a better feature set than traditional telephone service representing an increase of fifteen percent since 2004.

 

According to the report, customer confusion might be driven in part by the different positioning strategies of the VoIP providers. "For instance, cable companies are positioning their VoIP telephony service as the same as regular phone service which diminishes the need for awareness as a prerequisite to adoption," noted Yankee Group's news release.

 

Now, looking at this theory closer, I'm sure many of our readers have seen "digital phone" advertisements from telecoms and cable operators. These companies advertise their offerings without revealing that their services are really VoIP-based, therefore creating confusion amongst the public. This confusion could be even worse if we think about the E911 regulation nightmare VoIP providers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are going through this month. The agency mandated that all VoIP providers interconnected to the public switched telephone network must provide E911 with their consumer VoIP offerings.

 

"The traditional new product adoption curve is broken with VoIP telephone service," said Kate Griffin, Yankee Group, program manager, Consumer Technologies & Services. "Traditionally, new technology products educate and build awareness in the early adopter segments of the market, and then progress incrementally toward less technologically advanced segments. VoIP is simultaneously being marketed as a traditional phone product with mass-market appeal and as a new and different VoIP product with appeal to more price-sensitive and technologically advanced segments."

 

These findings give us in the industry an insight on the public's lack of education about VoIP products and services. It teaches us that we really need to work on educating our customers, both in the residential and business markets, about not only how much can they save by buying our services and products, but also how they work and how can they really change the way we communicate.   

 

Yankee Group Research, Inc.

 

-----

 

Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and Internet Telephony magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit Johanne Torres' columnist page.