Brian Powell, managing director of VoIP Ireland, told ElectricNews.Net that his company aims to get past some of these stigmas by targeting an industry that operates almost entirely over the phone: call centres. "People do have questions about reliability, which is why we have gone after call centres. In fact, our first customer was a call centre and we have signed up others since then," he said. "The entire business of a call centre is over the phone and if we can convince these companies, I think it will be easier to get other SMEs to sign up."

Powell's sentiments about the prospects for consumer VoIP are certainly consistent with what is happening in the US. According to research and consultancy firm Parks Associates, in a white paper entitled "VoIP: At Last a Killer App?", if VoIP remains largely unregulated in America, then consumers with broadband hook-ups will make the transition, eventually. Parks said that the average saving for a US family will be about USD8 per month, presuming they stopped using their traditional phone altogether. In time, the lower call costs could encourage more to use broadband, which would drive the price of the whole service down even further.

From the article "Start-up aims to eradicate VoIP stigma" by Matthew Clark

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