Not that I can blame them, though…

It should come as no surprise that USA Today might be writing from time to time about Enterprise IP Telephony. It's something I write about – often. 🙂

I only get to read USA Today when I travel (and stay at Marriott hotels), otherwise, it's a daily diet of The Wall Street Journal. One thing I like about USA Today is their use of statistics and pie charts to show data related to the article. For example, on January 27, 2005, USA Today covered how people use "net-based phones." The article spoke about how a user makes both his cell and his net-based phones ring. This lets him accept calls everywhere without people having to know more than one number for them. Typical consumer fare.

But, in the inset box (one of my favorite spaces), they highlighted statistics by InStat/MDR showing that in 2004 88% of business lines in America are 'traditional' meaning legacy digital and a forecast decline to 59% by 2008. So IP Telephony lines are expected to grow from 12% of the market to 41% over the next three years. Triple installed base. Pretty good growth.

Similarly, the consumer market will decline from 99% traditional to 91% in the same period.

Part of this assumption set for the consumer market, doesn't really deal with the emergence of wireless service as the primary home voice connectivity platform. My kids for example, who live away (one in TX and one in upstate NY), are part of the same wireless plan and dial my wife and me for free. They ring our wireless phones all the time. My home phone rarely rings. In fact, the only reason I have a home phone line is to use the 3Com NBX V3000 in my house, get DSL for my Internet service and because DirectTV doesn't support Ethernet on their set-top boxes for pay TV.

I think the erosion of home connectivity will be more aggressive than indicated in the study.

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