Recession and VoIP: Good and bad news

Industry analysts expect consumers and small businesses to be drawn to cheap voice-over-IP offers as they try to cut costs in light of lost jobs, mortgage foreclosures and shrinking investments. In fact, telecom service providers would be wise to push their broadband offerings and add low-cost VoIP of their own, said Sally Cohen, broadband analyst with IDC. “They can keep these customers as broadband customers and generate some additional voice revenues at very little cost to them,” Cohen said.

Conversely, businesses may slow down any VoIP deployment that requires a major capital investment, such as the purchase of IP phones or IP-PBXs, said David Passmore, research director for the Burton Group. Long-distance service is already quite cheap, and the main source of VoIP savings — moves, adds and changes without expense — can't justify the cost of VoIP gear and network upgrades, he said.