* Majority of survey respondents still track cost of voice vs. data
Several weeks ago, we opined that the actual transport costs for voice would soon become insignificant in comparison to data transport costs. The reasons are simple: The cost per minute for toll voice continues to fall and the number of bits per second needed to transport each toll-quality voice conversation continues to drop and/or become increasingly irrelevant. And the sheer volume of data transported across networks continues to skyrocket.
As a result of these suppositions, we asked you to respond to a quick poll to let us know about your experiences. And even though we’re leaving the poll open for further data collection, we think the trends are clear.
So far, 79 respondents have participated in the survey. From these initial results, it appears that slightly more of you still track the cost of voice vs. data (40%) than those who don’t track these costs (31%). However, a surprising 29% of you don’t know whether these costs are tracked. (We’ll assume that having this knowledge simply is not a part of the job description.)
We also asked about the relative costs of voice vs. data transport three years ago, now, and what you anticipate in three years. The results were pretty much what we expected, but it’s still good to have the data to support the supposition.
For instance, in the U.S., three years ago, roughly 46% of the respondents spent more for voice transport than for data transport. By comparison, today only 20% of the respondents are spending more for voice than data. In another three years, the percentage of respondents who will continue to spend more for voice than for data will drop to about 15%.
We’ll bring you another update on the poll results in a few weeks. But if you’d like to add your input and/or review the results to date, please visit the URL below.
