Service Providers Finding Their Place in VoIP Market with IP Centrex/Hosted PBX
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IP Centrex/Hosted PBX will give carriers a way to increase the margins on their existing data services and increase their overall business profitability, while protecting existing revenues.
By Daryl Schoolar, Senior Analyst -- In-Stat/MDR, 3/5/2003
As one of the emerging services/technologies that allow businesses to simplify their networks by collapsing their voice and data into a single network, IP Centrex/Hosted PBX represents one of the growing IP services that will help carriers add value to their data networks. According to high-tech market research firm, In-Stat/MDR, these services will give carriers a way to increase the margins on their existing data services and increase their overall business profitability, while protecting existing revenues.
As a result, In-Stat/MDR forecasts significant growth for IP Centrex/Hosted PBX over the next several years with worldwide IP Centrex/Hosted PBX service revenues experiencing a projected Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 105.7% from 2002-2007, and revenues derived from sales of IP Centrex/Hosted PBX infrastructure (application servers and seat licenses) posting a CAGR of 141.8% over the same time frame. However, The market won’t really take off until the US RBOCs start deploying their own IP Centrex/Hosted PBX solution, and this won’t happen until at least mid to late 2004. In the meantime, US growth in 2003 will come mainly from Tier 2 and Tier 3 service providers and greater service revenues will come from providers outside of the US.
In-Stat/MDR has also found that:
VoIP will continue to eat at the carriers existing voice revenues. Currently, the percent of voice traffic that is carried over IP is relatively small compared to circuit switched voice. However that is changing. IP Centrex/Hosted PBX gives carriers a service to sell to businesses, to compete with enterprise VoIP solutions.
Looking at just the announced customers of the leading IP Centrex/Hosted PBX solution providers, their largest service provider partners are outside the US. In fact, all of NetCentrex‘s current service provider customers are outside of the US. This will change however, as more US service providers start selling this service.
The four big drivers for end-users to migrate to an IP Centrex/Hosted PBX service are as follows: Simplify the WAN, increased messaging features, unified, multi-location calling features, and simplify phone moves, adds, and changes.
This Market Alert is drawn from the In-Stat/MDR report, Hosted Voice Switching – IP Centrex/Hosted PBX (#IN030735TX), which looks at the overall market for IP Centrex/Hosted PBX, in terms of the underlying technology, network architecture, competing technologies and services, market drivers, and market challenges. Also included in this report are worldwide forecasts of service revenues and infrastructure expenditures. Companies covered in this report include AG Communications, BroadSoft, CommWorks, NetCentrex, Nortel, Sylantro, VocalData, Bell South, GoBeam, ICG Communications, M5, PingTone, and WorldCom. |
