Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "VoIP In Western Europe: Opportunities & Forecasts, 2010-2015" report to their offering.

VoIP in Western Europe - Mobile Flies the Flag for VoIP

Technologically astute consumers of telecommunications services around the world are becoming increasingly aware that it is possible to make significant savings on traditional voice calls by bypassing traditional wireline and mobile phone operators and availing themselves of a growing range of cheap services offered by low-cost service providers. Not only does the internet serve as the perfect medium for bringing these services to the attention of consumers but also, increasingly, it is becoming the very medium by which these services are provided.

Consequently, a great deal of attention is now being paid to VoIP, a technological conceit that offers a very low-cost alternative to traditional fixed-line circuit-switched voice platforms. Because voice signals are treated as highly compressed data packets in the IP environment, these digital packets can be moved from point to point at very high speeds and in combination with other kinds of data. Less infrastructure is needed to achieve this process and, consequently, costs to consumers can be kept very low.

The arrival of next-generation wireless technologies is providing a crucial turning point in the fortunes of VoIP, potentially allowing its use to grow dynamically worldwide. Third- and fourth-generation mobile networks are now being deployed with great rapidity, even in emerging markets, allowing for faster modes of exchange of complex voice and data signals. At the same time, advanced but affordable smart phones/mobile phones that are able to send and receive high-speed data communications are beginning to offer a real alternative to expensive fixed broadband accesses, which also are hard to come by outside urban and affluent areas.

And with fixed broadband infrastructure in emerging markets set to remain available only on a restricted geographic basis hampered further by relatively expensive usage costs as well as the low penetration of sufficiently advanced PCs BMI believes that mobile platforms now offer a real opportunity for VoIP to become a highly disruptive, if not outright dominant voice platform in the future.