Future Sparkles Brightly for VoIP Jay Wrolstad, newsfactor.com
Fri May 6, 1:52 PM ET
The future looks bright indeed for Internet-based calling, with recent research showing that VoIP services generated US$1.3 billion in revenues last year in the U.S. and that earnings are expected to hit $20 billion by 2009.
Infonetics Research reports that while VoIP is relatively new to the telecom scene, growth rates will soar as communication networks and services migrate toward the alternative technology.
The market research and consulting firm also reports that VoIP is developing a strong following among businesses.
Businesses Ante Up
A survey of small, medium and large organizations reveals that U.S. businesses spent an average of $117,000 on IP voice technology in 2003, with that amount rising 46 percent in 2004 and an additional 9 percent this year.
Resistance to the new technology is fading, Infonetics reported, citing respondents who rated all barriers to deploying IP voice lower this year than last year in a similar study.
"As carriers migrate their network toward IP over the next five years, more services are inevitably next-generation VoIP services," said Infonetics analyst Kevin Mitchell.
"It's still early, though, as VoIP services revenue represents only about $20 billion out of $400 billion in total telecom revenues."
Selling Points
Operators, including telecom carriers and cable companies, are particularly interested in offering hosted VoIP services that create new revenue streams by targeting businesses with add-on enhanced conferencing, office collaboration and presence capabilities, Mitchell said.
Infonetics reported that the number of residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers in North America will climb to 20.8 million in 2008 from 1.1 million in 2004. Business-hosted VoIP service revenue will top IP PBX services by 2006, as thousands of small and medium businesses adopt hosted offerings.
As for adoption rates, analysts said that 29 percent of large, 16 percent of medium and 4 percent of small organizations will have IP voice by the end of 2005.
That growth is driven by better communications management and lower operational costs. At this point, Hybrid Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs) are the favored method for delivering voice service at corporate headquarters.
"(Time Division Multiplexing) service still has a future," Mitchell said, "but all of the major operators investing more in VoIP. It's only a matter of time before VoIP becomes the default choice for voice communications."
news.yahoo.com |
