Mobile, VoIP Replacing Traditional Voice Service, Researcher Says

Traditional residential telephone service will whither away in Western Europe in the next four years, a study released Wednesday by U.K. market research firm Analysys claims.

Specifically, mobile service and voice-over-IP (VoIP) will account for 60 percent of all residential voice service expenditures by 2010, the report says.

"The mass market for voice services in Western Europe is being transformed by the substitution of mobile and new VoIP services for traditional fixed voice services," Katrina Bond, lead author of the report, said in a statement. "We expect that in five years 45 per cent of voice minutes will be made from a mobile or VoIP connection, compared to 28 percent in 2004."

Overall, a quarter of households in Western Europe will switch away from so-called plain old telephony services by 2010 to a combination of mobile and VoIP service, the report concluded. About 45 percent of all voice minutes by residential customers will be made from one of those two newer types of connections, according to the report.

Wired broadband is just starting to grow rapidly in Western Europe but, by 2010, VoIP over broadband connections could account for 9.6 percent of all voice minutes, Bond said.Because VoIP over broadband is so inexpensive, the percentage of users' incomes spent on voice service will decrease in coming years.