A new CHOICE survey has found that over half of Australians are taking advantage of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services as a low-cost alternative to traditional telco offerings.
As part of an ongoing review of the VoIP market, consumer watchdog CHOICE surveyed 3945 of its members between 15-29 July 2013. It found that 52.2 percent of respondents were using VoIP to make calls.
“While there are a number of variables that can compromise reception including internet congestion, call quality for users of VoIP has improved, with the Australian Communication and Media Authority claiming VoIP reception can now be superior to landlines,” said CHOICE’s head of media Tom Godfrey in a statement.
For most consumers, the decision to switch to VoIP came down to monthly savings on their phone bill, Godfrey said.
“CHOICE found that in some cases, the price of a 10-minute Skype call from Australia to mainland New Zealand or the UK is more than six times cheaper than a Telstra service, so switching to VoIP can save consumers a lot of money.
“VoIP offers people relief from the potentially unnecessary fixed line services that have seen consumers ringing up big bills before they have even made a call.”
Have you abandoned your landline and gone mobile/VoIP-only for calls? Tell us why in the comments section below.
Comments
4 responses to “VoIP Use On The Rise”
Does any know of examples where a consumer will choose VoIP for better quality voice, or enhanced service features like the ability to call both the landline and the mobile (twinning) or is it all cost saving driven? I understand it is more likely to be benefits driven in the business market rather than consumer but with so many SOHO workers today the line between the two is sometimes blurred.
I’m using iiNet’s VOIP service. The quality was pretty good when I used their BOB router, but now I’ve changed to an Asterisk server running on a Raspberry Pi with a few handsets dotted around the house. The call quality is excellent and the extra functionality provided by Asterisk makes all the difference, I’d probably drop the land line all together and go mobile only otherwise.
Like many young people, I use my mobile phone as a low cost alternative. I could give my peers a VoIP number, but none would call it. Seems to be more a thing businesses rollout (either Cisco or TIPT) to employees they won’t trust with a mobile phone. Young people also move around a lot and many live in share houses, so a mobile is a necessity. Land line numbers aren’t very portable so people would lose contact without a mobile. Even within companies with land lines, the numbers are changed on a whim as people move about or the whole place shifts.
As for people in other countries, then Google Hangouts, FaceTime voice, Skype all work pretty well and even support video.
Are Gen Y that itinerant? I would have thought they would just give their parents landline number to people given that is where most of them live
(generational HADOUKEN!)
I use the VOIP service that is provided free by my ISP for outgoing calls when my mobile signal is poor.
Otherwise it’s mobile all the way for me.
I should explain that the VOIP service is free, but I pay for the calls. (but not much).
My husband and I use MyNetFone nakedADSL, so we have no need for a landline at home, but we weren’t prepared to give up on having a landline number altogether (calling 13 numbers for customer services rakes up the mobile bill sometimes). So we use MyNetFone’s VoIP service as our landline number. We don’t really receive any calls on it as our family is setup with free mobile calls to each other. But we use the VoIP service to make calls out when needed. The service is soooooo cheap. We were also able to use it while we travelled overseas for 3 months, could call people back home for just 10c! For us it is definitely the price side of things, but at the same time, I could also see myself sticking with just our mobile phones too, but given our VoIP service is so cheap, it doesn’t hurt to have it setup too. FYI Bria iPhone app works great for making the VoIP calls from our mobiles without having to have other hardware setup at home. We also get to keep our landline number whenever we move. Bonus!