European VoIP demand booming

The demand for VoIP solutions is booming according to vendor Shoretel. They recently set up offices in Madrid, Munich and a reseller partnership in Benelux to support their European expansion. An interesting viewpoint in the article:

"The nature of Europe, as a set of countries that need to work together and interoperate on standards just to conduct business, lends itself to coming together around the IPT standards and adopting them across the continent. High toll rates make communications costly and so deploying an IP telephony solution not only reduces telephone bills but ensures gains in productivity.”

I never looked at it this way but it certainly is true. When I started this blog I planned to also highlight the differences between the USA and Europe on this matter and this is certainly one. The two markets are very different, and stuff that works in the USA might not necessarily work at this side of the ocean.

An interesting concept in the USA is the alliance between Avaya and AT&T. Although I'm sure similar initiatives exist all over the globe, this is the first one I've seen on such a large scale with both vendors actually pushing VoIP as the solution. Unfortunately still many incumbents partner with vendors of traditional telephony systems in order to protect their market share.

AT&T has joined up with Avaya in an effort to help companies smoothly transition to Voice over Internet Protocol telephone systems. The project is aimed at giving business customers a single point of contact for the design and implementation of VoIP deployments.

Still plenty room for opportunity here. If you are a telephony systems manufacturer, and everyone can be one these days thanks to Asterisk, try to partner with a local, small, alternative operator that supports VoIP. If you are a small, local VoIP operator, find a PBX manufacturer to partner with. If done properly, this relationship should be beneficial for both.

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