The latest Gartner research estimates that one third of people in the USA and Europe will abandon phone lines for wireless and broadband Internet telephony come 2009. Consumer confidence in high-speed services has been touted as one of the reasons for this:

Skype, which provides software for broadband telephony via the PC, has proved immensely popular with consumers, although Gartner predicts that VoIP-enabled telephones will eventually win out.

"With Skype lots of people have downloaded it but not that many people use it. It requires a computer and a headset and it is more likely that telephone services such as that offered by Vonage will be what catches on," said David Neil, research vice president at Gartner.

Most are embracing the technology and will therefore gain some revenue from it but the fact that the prices for VoIP are much lower means it will not be a cash cow in the same way as fixed telephone services have been in the past. There will be three billion mobile subscribers in the world by 2010, according to Gartner.

From the consumers perspective this can only be good news because it will force fixed-line operators into a more competitive pricing stance, while helping to evolve better products.

Suffice to say we look forward to seeing how the market evolves over the coming years, with dreams of cheap video/voice phones connected over broadband. More @ BBC News Online.