IP Telephony to Drive the Open Communications Revolution, According to  Piper Jaffray Study
   Investment Banking Firm Expects Spending to  Reach $14.7 Billion on IP Telephony  Solutions and Services by 2003, Driven by the  Adoption of the Technology by Major  Service Providers and Corporations' Need to  Integrate Disparate Networks, Lower  Costs and Offer a Broader List of Enhanced Services
   MINNEAPOLIS, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Spending  on IP telephony-related software, hardware, products  and services  will reach $14.7 billion by the year 2003, according  to Edward R. Jackson, senior research analyst at  Piper Jaffray Inc.  That's one of the conclusions Jackson draws in ''The  IP Telephony Report -- Driving The Open  Communications  Revolution,'' released this month. The first  comprehensive study of the rapidly emerging IP  telephony industry,  Jackson's report outlines how this spending will  revolutionize the ways in which we communicate for  business and with  each other.
   The 170-page document provides an in-depth  examination of six separate areas of the IP telephony  industry: enabling  technology, enterprise solutions, carrier-class  solutions, applications, service providers and  professional end-to-end  services. The report includes projections in each area  for revenue growth, size of the industry opportunity,  business  models and potential catalysts and restraints.  Additionally, the report discusses the technology  behind IP telephony and  the new network architectures upon which these new  communication networks will be built.
   Some of the report's most significant findings  include: 
   -- IP telephony combines the advantages of both the  traditional voice networks with the advantages of the  data  networks. This combination results in the existence  of a single, inter-operable network with quality of  service  (QoS), class of service (CoS), new services and  scalable bandwidth;
   -- Traditional service providers are caught in the  middle of a large scale convergence of voice and  data, which  has caused an immediate need for trials and testing  of this new infrastructure. We believe trials will  continue  through 1999, with massive deployments to begin in  2000;
   -- The large data/telecom vendors will dominate the  infrastructure market and smaller vendors will  dominate the  applications market. Alternatively, small and new  carriers will be the ''introducers'' of the technology  to the  world, but the large service providers will make this  a mainstream technology. The industry has yet to  reach its  true acceleration phase and, consequently,  significant growth awaits its future;
   -- While toll bypass remains the dominant driver of  the industry, eventually the enhanced services will  take over  as the leading driver of the 158 percent blended  growth rate for IP telephony. These enhanced  services include:  Click-N-Call, Internet Call Waiting, Unified  Messaging, Surf-With-Me, Collaboration, and  Conferencing;
   -- Minutes of communication services traveling over  IP telephony networks will grow from 70 million  and less  than 0.1 percent of all PSTN minutes in 1997, to  over 70 billion minutes and 6.1 percent of all PSTN  minutes  by 2003;
   -- All segments of this industry are projected to grow  at or above a 100 percent compound annual growth  rate  (CAGR) into the year 2003. Leading this growth  wave will be the carrier-class infrastructure market  with a 170  percent CAGR, followed by services at 168 percent,  enhanced services at 125 percent, enterprise  infrastructure  at 93 percent, and enabling technology at 92 percent  over this period.  |