Business can reduce voice spend by a third with FMC and VoIP

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Companies are spending more than 80 per cent of their comms budget on mobile services, prompting them to search for other technologies that can cut costs.

A clever combination of fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) and voice over IP (VoIP) technologies will be the key for businesses to unlock savings of more than 30 per cent from their communications spend, according to IT, media and telecoms specialist Analysys.

This shift, which will see companies bypassing expensive mobile services, will put additional pressure on mobile operators to maintain revenues, claims the analyst.

Corporate communications managers will garner the most benefit by merging traditional mobile packages with VoIP on Wi-Fi and using dual-mode phones and wireless gateways to slash roaming costs and fixed-to-mobile fees, according to Analysys' report entitled Fixed-Mobile Convergence in the Enterprise Voice Market.

"Companies are spending over 80 per cent of their call bill on mobile services, and that is causing them to turn to new technology looking for savings," said the report's author, Margaret Hopkins.

"Wireless gateways, VoIP and Wi-Fi offer them ways of cutting this bill that are independent of the network operators. Operators need to come up with innovative services to minimise the revenue leakage."

The report also forecasts future revenue for fixed, mobile and converged enterprise voice services in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the UK and Western Europe.

Maggie Holland
Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.