Are the days numbered for the traditional landline?

Italian ISP Tiscali has sounded a warning to incumbent landline providers as it begins to roll out voice over internet protocol services to residential customers across Europe.

The ISP is taking aim at traditional landline revenues with the much cheaper option of VoIP, which it is to offer as a value-added service to its existing DSL customers in association with convergence specialist Netcentrex.

Paulo Susnik, CTO of Tiscali, said: "Our focus is to replace the line of the incumbent."

It's a trend that already has major telcos worried - last week a BT representative confirmed to silicon.com that the company is working on VoIP in order to soften the blow to its landline revenues from competing VoIP providers. The representative told silicon.com that even established telcos "can't fight the tide forever" - an admission that the cheaper VoIP is set to become standard.

Olivier Hersent, chairman CTO and founder of Netcentrex, said: "The cost of DSL lines is constantly decreasing and I think the move to VoIP is something we are going to see much more of."

"Tiscali's is the first such case but will see a wave of similar launches from all service providers who currently offer DSL," he predicted.

Hersent warned that incumbent telcos will either have to move with the times or suffer the consequences.

"I think next year this will be huge and even the incumbent telcos need to move to VoIP."