LONDON-A new study by Infonetics Research says deployments of Voice over Internet Protocol are set to triple in the next two years, jumping from 10 percent in 2005 to 31 percent in 2007. Infonetics Research said the growth in deployments is being driven by the growing availability of VoIP enabled handsets and voice-enabling infrastructure.
The study, “User Plans for Wireless LANs: North America 2005,” is based on in-depth interviews with 240 small, medium and large organizations that plan on using WLANs by 2006, including analysis of five vertical markets, as well as surveys of 450 organizations for WLAN adoption rates.
Study highlights include:
c WLAN adoption grows during the next three years; Infonetics projects 57 percent of small, 62 percent of medium and 72 percent of large organizations in North America will use WLANs by 2009.
c The leading barriers to WLAN adoption are security and privacy.
c Intranet or VPN access and Internet access for guests top the list of applications implemented over WLANs.
c Wired LAN backup, along with asset and RF ID tracking are already seen as promising applications.
c Of respondents, 42 percent have a wireless policy that defines how employees can use the WLAN and other wireless technologies-44 percent deploy and manage their access points separately, without the use of WLAN switches. This approach declines by 2007, as centralized control architectures gain traction and the number of WLAN switch ports deployed grows significantly.
“Whilst increasing employee mobility and productivity are currently the top reasons for deploying WLANs, voice over WLAN is a growing driver and is potentially disruptive,” said Richard Webb, analyst at Infonetics Research. “The traditional model of time- and distance-based pricing for voice calls is being eroded by VoIP, and as VoIP goes wireless, it presents an opportunity for enterprise users and a challenge for operators.”
