The slow adoption of broadband in Britain at the start of the decade is being blamed for the lackluster roll out of internet telephony in the country today.
The UK is actually lagging behind Europe in adopting VoIP and its failure to adopt broadband as early as other countries is to blame, according to a report.
The EIAA claimed that 10 per cent of Europeans had already made phone calls over the web but only 5 per cent had done it in the UK. The EIAA also said that even though the UK has caught up with European broadband usage, consumers are still trying to warm up to broadband services like VoIP not like other countries like France and Germany which had more time to familiarise themselves with these new technologies.
A few years ago, the UK’s broadband penetration was way behind that of other developed nations. The OECD said that there were only 0.6 per cent broadband connections for every one hundred UK inhabitants, compared to 1 per cent in France and 2.3 per cent in Germany. Britain never got to catch up with France until the third quarter of 2004. This was when both countries recorded 8.8 broadband connections for every one hundred people.
But Skype, the most popular internet telephony service at present, has said that it does not see the UK as trailing in the VoIP race.
The company said that based on the number of people using Skype in the UK, it is not trailing their European counterparts. It even claimed that it is experiencing an impressive pick-up in the UK and so far it is only railing behind Germany, France and Poland.