Dixons
Stores Group (DSG) is pulling out of the internet telephony market less than
a year after launching its
Freetalk
service.
DSG informed its VoIP customers by email that it was closing the service and
switching them to rival firm
Vonage,
although the Freetalk website is still offering the service.
Dixons
launched
Freetalk in September 2005, pointing to the seven million users in the UK
broadband market as an indicator of the potential market.
Simon Turner, group managing director at DSG, said originally that internet
telephony services were now stable and "easy enough to launch to the average
home user".
However, the company has now admitted that the market had not lived up to its
expectations.
"The VoIP market in the UK has been slower to take off than we envisaged. We
still believe VoIP is coming, but it is going to come more slowly," DSG
International chief executive John Clare told
The
Telegraph.
The Freetalk service required an adapter to make the VoIP connection using a
customer's normal handset, without needing a PC.
Freetalk's closure comes hot on the heels of the launch of DSG's
£50m
technical support service.
Do you agree?
Have your say on this article