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South Wales pioneers the switch to a new phone era
(Western Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Keeping in touch in 2006 will be cheaper and easier than ever before - and South Wales is at the forefront of the revolution.
This year will see the 'onward march' of internet-based phone services, which are rapidly making traditional technologies obsolete by offering a far greater array of services at a greatly reduced cost, it was claimed yesterday.
And Cardiff, Bridgend and Pontypridd will be at the centre of the switchover, with BT planning to trial its new 'Voice over Internet Protocol' (VoIP) technology in the area in the second half of 2006.
The technology, which is already available online through companies such as Skype and Vonage, will become big business in 2006 as major phone companies accept that VoIP represents the future of telecommunications, according to Welsh multimedia expert Ian Courtney, of TM Communications.
He said, 'Who would have thought this time last year that a little company by the name of Skype would be sold for $2.5bn? Forecasting the future is one hell of a difficult prospect, but Skype sold for that sum of money because VoIP is rapidly becoming a mainstream technology.
'This year will see the onward march of VoIP as more and more big telephone companies, like BT, have to catch up with what companies like Skype have already done.
'It's forced the big carriers to get their acts together and I think we'll see more and more announcements in 2006 of the big carriers adopting VoIP. This is a pretty seminal moment for this technology, because the telephone network is one of the oldest technologies around. It's fairly basic and its basis has been around for over 100 hundred years, so in a very short space of time, it's being made redundant and being replaced by internet technology.
'2006 is an interesting time for this technology, and particularly for people in South Wales who will be using it before the rest of the world.'
The current system used for landline phones has changed little since it was invented in 1876, but now could be phased out entirely as companies bow to the commercial possibilities offered by the new internet-based platform, including facilities such as voice conferencing, and cheaper international calls.
Mr Courtney claimed the new technology was forcing existing telecommunications giants to reassess how they did business.
'A combination of technology and competition will see BT's traditional voice revenues, which are already in decline, continue to fall throughout the year,' he added.
'What they are facing is having to invest money to introduce new technology that will lead to a further decline in their revenues, which, commercially, is a difficult problem to get around.
'They will have to introduce new applications and new services around VoIP technology, and a simple way to do that is to offer a whole host of very cheap extra services, like video conferencing.'
But t
he nation's obsession with text messaging shows no signs of slowing down, with mobile phone users in the UK expected to send a combined average total of 100m text messages per day in 2006. The number of texts sent will rise from around 32bn during 2005 to 36.5bn next year, according to a forecast by the Mobile Data Association (MDA).
A rise in the use of text messaging for work purposes is one factor behind the increase.
Since 2001 the UK's annual text messaging figures have risen by at least 22% each year, evolving from a popular craze into an 'essential' communication tool, the MDA said. Chairman Mike Short said an increasing number of businesses were using text messages to inform customers about anything from taxi arrival times to the weather and their horoscopes.
'Businesses are using texts more than ever because they are seeing the power of convenience,' he added. What is Voice over IP?: Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) refers to technology which allows the routing of voice conversations over the internet, or any other IP-based network. In technical terms, this means that the voice data flows over a general-purpose packet-switched network, instead of traditional dedicated, circuit- switched voice transmission lines.
The main advantage of VoIP is the cost, with many servers offering the facility free of charge, apart from the cost of a broadband connection. Users are also able to take calls on their VoIP phone anywhere in the world, provided it is connected to the internet.
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