VOIP and SIP News

Talk between Australia and England at the moment tends to centre around the upcoming cricket duel for the Ashes.

But while the cricket is being played out from Brisbane to Sydney, young people in Australia may be crowing to their English counterparts over cheap internet calls.

Research is showing that increasing numbers of young people are using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in Australia as well as fixed and mobile phone lines.

The ACMA Report showed that one in three young Australian adults aged between 18–24 choose not to connect a fixed-line telephone when they moved out of their parents home.

While that may not sound surprisingly the figure has risen by a third in only one year.

Although figures are much lower when you consider the population as a whole, 14% of people are now using mobile devices which is a 40% increase since last year.

Amazingly the figure for VoIP is slightly higher at 16%. That means that just under 2.9 million Australians use VoIP services such as Skype at home so they can make cheap calls.

But the transition towards a complete VoIP environment is still a long way off, at least while older generation are still around. 97% of Australians who are over 65 rely on a fixed line phone.

The ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman, said: ‘The increasing functionality of mobile devices and VoIP is underpinning the importance of technology to the lifestyles of many Australians. That includes handset innovations such as the smartphone,  internet-enabled mobile devices and tablets."