Like many incumbent telecommunications carriers around the world, Telstra has been hearing a growing chorus of voices lately. And the voices have been anything but friendly.

Our inside sources tell us that Telstra has been caught completely off guard and has no clear idea of what to do about the coming VoIP revolution. "Telstra's scared about VoIP stealing its voice calls income and it doesn't know what to do about it," one highly placed source told us recently.

The idea that the nation's biggest voice services provider by a country mile does not have a credible VoIP strategy beggars belief. However, some industry watchers are being reluctantly led to that conclusion.

Recent reports in which Telstra has publicly embarrassed itself by doing a back-flip on its timeline to offer VoIP services lends weight to the contention that the carrier is in a state of confusion over the issue. First Telstra releases a statement saying that its VoIP trial fell short of expectations and therefore it would not offer VoIP services in 2005-06. Then within the space of a day Telstra issued a contradictory statement saying that although the VoIP trial fell short of expectations, the carrier "hoped" to launch VoIP services sometime within the 2005-06 financial year. Whichever statement you believe, Telstra has not committed itself to definitely being able to offer VoIP within 12 months.

According to one of our insiders, Telstra's VoIP plans have been blown out of the water by the unexpected rapidity with which VoIP has caught the imagination of both the business and consumer markets. This has been exacerbated by an internal culture of denial. "Everybody in Telstra has been indoctrinated with the idea that PSTN is superior to VoIP," our source said. "However, Telstra did have a five year plan to phase in VoIP and it is at approximately the half-way point. Unfortunately for Telstra, it realises that it should have had a three year plan because VoIP is going to happen right now."

South Australian ISP Internode is preparing to launch a VoIP service in the next two weeks, listed telco engin is actively ramping up its VoIP service and services from global VoIP provider Skype are now available on portable handsets. Yet our insider tells us that there is no feeling within the carrier that there is a sense of urgency to implement concrete plans for VoIP. "Telstra's strategy at this point is that PSTN is higher quality. Someone, somewhere within the organisation has got to face the problem because sooner or later they are going to be embarrassed into action," our source says.

The problem for Telstra is that no matter what strategy it employs it stands to lose. In all probability, despite its late start, the big carrier will end up winning the leading share of the VoIP market, in much the same way Big Pond leads the ISP market. However, the monopoly Telstra had with PSTN, the exorbitant line rental and call charges will soon be a thing of the past. That is a lot of easy money to kiss good-bye. For many, however, it will not be a moment too soon.