The complexity of voice over Wi-Fi technology and a lack of industry-wide standards are hampering its adoption by businesses, it has been claimed.

According to Stan Schatt, vice president and research director of ABI Research, the technology has so far only been taken up by the "historic early adopters" in "the healthcare, retail, manufacturing and hospitality" sectors.

However, larger companies have shunned voice over Wi-Fi, and are likely do so for some time yet, he said.

Mr Schatt attributed the reluctance to adopt the technology to the fact that voice over Wi-Fi frequently requires complex partnership agreements between manufacturers and vendors of individual system elements.

He told vnu.net: "Enterprise voice over Wi-Fi is a complicated market because there are so many disparate pieces of technology that have to work together. That requires a lot of partnering, and some vendors are better at partnering than others."

Meanwhile, the fact that there are no industry-wide standards has also mitigated wider take-up, he claims.