IP telephony proves good news for resellers

IP telephony is receiving a major boost from resellers, especially at small and medium-sized enterprises, new research reveals.

Both hybrid IP PBXes - meaning systems for analogue and digital telephony within organisations - and wired and Wi-Fi phones have proved strong offerings for resellers from April to June this year.

Georgia Garvey, research analyst and manager of the Canalys survey, said in a statement: "Mobile IP services represent a significant opportunity over the next 12 months."

Leading handset manufacturers such as Motorola and Nokia are in the process of adding Wi-Fi connectivity to their handsets and this is likely to propel organisations further to run calls over IP networks internally, Garvey added.

Resellers have proved good champions of IP telephony - especially in the SME market where some of the big boys don't sell direct - and it shows in their rating of the technology: 80 per cent said they see it as "secure and reliable" and 58 per cent said it works out cheaper than a traditional PBX.

Among the leading equipment vendors, Avaya is doing well, as too are Alcatel and Ericsson.

The Canalys survey found Cisco isn't yet rated highly among SMEs in IP telephony. The thinking is that it has so far concentrated on larger organisations but resellers represent a route into smaller businesses.