10 March 2008
by Alex Scroxton
Major carriers have been "mis-selling" IPT networks and failing to provide a quality service, leaving customers having to make changes to make their infrastructure robust, according to research from comms infrastructure and IP-network services provider SAS Group.
"A lot of companies have been led down the garden path by carriers saying they had quality of service when they didn’t," said Charles Davis, CEO at SAS Group.
He added: "There has been a huge amount of mis-selling. Everybody says they have the same functionality but if you look into the details they often work completely differently."
"Not many people know that, to run an IPT call, you have to guarantee class of service. That’s a big mentality change for businesses, and they have to do a huge amount of infrastructure work to make sure they can guarantee quality," he said.
The report showed that the financial services industry led the field, with 94 per cent having an IPT system in place, driven mainly by the increasing stability of IPT networks and UC platforms, but 63 per cent were still using internet-based VPNs.
The survey of CIOs and IT decision makers across the UK business community said 69 per cent of financial organisations planned to add unified communications capacity before March 2009.
The survey’s findings were backed up by Andy Horn, UK SME division head at voice, data and managed services provider Colt Telecommunications, who revealed that his partner community was reporting similar conditions.
"We’re finding our VARs and channel partners are increasingly picking up tier-two or -three banks and finance houses, businesses that previously would have wanted to work direct," he said.
