24 March 2008
The growing hosted VoIP market is driving resellers to rethink their sales strategies, with many that had been selling VoIP on cost-savings being edged out of the market by some aggressive pricing from BT.
Glenn Tookey, marketing director at InTechnology, which bought ex-BT arm Evoxus last year to form part of its IPT division, confirmed it was conducting a strategic review of its VoIP business but said this was in response to other firms catching up with its position.
"InTechnology is setting its strategy for 2008 and 2009, based on the fact that we’ve fully integrated the Evoxus acquisition," he said.
"A year ago, people used to do VoIP on the basis that it was cheaper, which was compelling then, but now BT is impacting the lads out there selling hosted VoIP," said one reseller who declined to be identified. "I know of several IP telephony providers reviewing their commitment."
He said he had lost several existing customers to special pricing offers from BT, including one multi-site deal that had spent around £130,000 a year on its calls.
One BT competitor spoke out, accusing BT Wholesale of being so aggressive in its pricing that it was driving many out of the market, and Recurve Technologies managing director Colin Symington agreed that "some fantastic deals on BT" were causing prices across the board to drop.
But others said resellers that sold hosted VoIP on price had completely missed the point.
"A lot of voice resellers have jumped on the bandwagon, but they’ve not seen the full picture and are selling VoIP on call minutes because that’s what they know," said one source. "The convergence argument is broader, and it’s more profitable to approach it that way."
BT was unavailable for comment.
