I received the following PM from a lurker, that I thought was an excellent comment on my post, and I hope he doesn't mind if I post it in public, keeping his name private.
>>In 1997, worldwide IP traffic averaged 6.3 million minutes a
>>month. By 2002, it is expected to reach 8.8 billion minutes/month.
I have the feeling that these numbers are inflated and include a lot of other services apart from voice over IP.. I always trust Jeff Pulver when it comes to making estimations. According to him VoIP is
3. Not a 1998 Threat to Service Revenue (..for traditional telcos..) . Despite the Hype propagated by the media and mis-informed market analysts - in the current US$ 400 Billion Dollar Global Minutes Marketplace - 1998 Revenue for IP Telephony Minutes will be no more than US$ 50 million.
(from Pulver points: July 21, 1998)
50 million USD revenue for 1998 .. at least, that gives us a starting point.. Now, that does not tell us what 2000 is going to be like.. Goldman Sachs and Frost&Sullivan's estimate differ by a factor of 8 !!!
Jeff himself admits that the growth is going to be phenomenal.. the whole telecom industry might go over 1 trillion USD in revenues in a few years with the addition of X over IP services...
What fraction of this is VoiP going to represent? probably hard to tell...
Then again, if DGIV manages to get 0.1% of that traffic by also providing enhanced services in the future.. we're all set..
1 B USD of revenues per year.. not bad....
(DGIV's web site is hinting at the fact that they might provide other services apart from international voice in the future.. I think that JC has understood what Delta Three management has been publicly saying for months.. right now, most VoIP companies are making lots of $$ by providing cheap minutes and bypassing the obsolete settlement rate system that pushes international rates for circuit switched voice up in a very artificial manner. But this is only going to last 2-4 years, experts predict, and traditional telcos will be able to come closer to the rates that current VoIP startups are offering..This number might be closer to 2 years if the FCC gives US carriers the freedom to negotiate settlement rates with non dominant foreign termination carriers in an effort to bring them down faster... A ruling on this should happen in the next few days/hours... When those rates come down significantly, enhanced services and efficient network management is what is going to be the bread and butter of VoIP companies .. and it looks like DGIV is positioning itself very well for that)...
Ooops, I'm lecturing again.....sorry about that..
bottom line, even if I think the numbers of the "sotm" are misleading, I somehow agree with you that if everything goes as planned and if DGIV doesn't get stuck providing voice only (they already have bought an ISP), 1B USD revenues a year is possible..
As far as DGIV grabbing 10% of the international voice market, I don't know...seems extremely optimistic to me.. then again, you have been very conservative with your $0.01/minute...
Typed all this in a rush.. hope it somehow makes sense...
Keep up the good work, |
