Thursday, April 21, 2005

VoIP Driving Broadband??

One of Niklas Zennstrom's statements at VON Canada (Page 10 of the presentation) is that "VoIP is Driving Broadband." Interesting statement, and rather provocative. How many of the 100M Skype downloads were people who were just about to download Skype over their V.92 dial-up internet connection, and then said, "Gosh, I better go out and get that broadband connection before I use this"? How many of the 32.5M broadband subscribers in the US went out and got their broadband connection so they could get Vonage, AT&T CallVantage, or one of the cable VoIP services?

Somewhat less facetiously, is there any data related to broadband purchase decisions that shows that "ability to use VoIP" was a factor in the decision for any significant number of purchasers? I haven't found anything regarding decision factors in broadband purchases on the Broadband or VoIP categories of itfacts.biz.

Widespread adoption of broadband access is clearly an enabler for VoIP, but a claim that VoIP is "driving broadband" seems a bit of a stretch to me.