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Reg readers place VoIP ahead of 3G

Word's up on the voice application market

Here are the latest results from MetriNets, the resource formerly known as Reg Reader Research, our joint venture in online opinion polls with our partners Tom's Hardware and Metrinomics, the online market research firm.

This month we're taking a look at readers' attitudes towards the voice applications market, based on the highlights of our recent survey of the market.

Convergence between voice and data networks was a key theme of the survey and the consensus was that technologies like voice over IP (VoIP), Voice over Frame Relay and Voice over ATM were "fairly developed". That compares to a view that the public switched telephone network (PSTN) is highly developed, and that 3G is "fairly undeveloped".

Looking ahead, 123 of the 655 people who completed the survey thought that VoIP and the PSTN are the two technologies best prepared for interconnection. Interestingly more (64 respondents) thought 3G and VoIP were best suited for interconnection than opted for 3G and the PSTN (45 people).

The are of voice applications covers a lot of ground so we also wanted to gauge your thoughts on the relative progress of various enabling technologies.

Speech recognition was the most highly evolved of these technologies, you reckoned, followed by audio standards and development applications and tools. VoiceXML and SALT were undeveloped in comparison, you reckoned.

Looking at suppliers of speech-based products and services, IBM had the greatest brand recognition, particularly with its ViaVoice product, followed by Dragon, Microsoft, AT&T and L&H.

Among participants to our survey there was a fairly rosy view about whether speech/voice applications projects would generate a return in investment within three years. The consensus was that this was "fairly likely" in ecommerce, professional services, and applications but far less likely in hosting. Basically, a positive response then.

Applications where you reckoned speech application technology would particular bring benefits in games and entertainment. The technology was reckoned to be fairly suited to applications like directory services, travel and finance.

MetriNets is running continuous polling on attitudes towards a raft of IT sectors. We're asking up to five per cent of our panels to participate each day. Again we will be publishing a summary of the results. Members will have access to a more detailed participants' report and our thanks for taking part in the survey.

We're also working on a discount structure for market research reports that we may publish. Our next study will look at residential broadband, followed by a study of the security market in September. ®

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