VoIP Now Outselling Digital PBX Lines

Dec 27, 2006 (CIO Today) — "You're not just changing the technology in the back room," with IP telephony, says Craig Hinkley, senior vice president and manager of strategy, architecture and security for enterprise access and desktop services at Bank of America. "What you're doing has an impact on the way associates are using the technology every day; it's a little more disruptive."

Is VoIP reliable? Scalable? Ready for prime time? For the answer, you only need to look at the raft of ambitious enterprise VoIP projects -- with multiple-thousands of phones -- announced in recent months, or the latest telephony market research, which shows VoIP outselling digital PBX lines for the first time. 
"IP telephony has gone mainstream," says VoIP analyst Brian Riggs, of Current Analysis. "There's no doubt about it."

Planned and ongoing VoIP rollouts at Bank of America, The New York Times Co., Amazon.com, Chicago public schools, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and dozens of other enterprises all point to the acceptance of VoIP as the new standard for business telephone and messaging systems, analysts and users say. 

Not that telecom professionals are entirely abandoning more than 50 years of digital PBX technology. Many are mixing IP and time division multiplexing TDM technologies for now as they wean employees off of the old phone equipment. 

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The shift in market dominance from TDM to IP really became apparent in the first quarter of 2006, according to research firm Synergy Research Group. Two years ago, only a third of business phone system lines were IP, but by this year's third quarter, more than 60% were. (Enterprises have spent $7.7 billion on telephony in the first three quarters of 2006, according to Synergy).