VoIP Services Market Growing Strong

Two new voice over IP reports were recently published by the market research firm Infonetics Research: its new SIP Trunking and Enterprise SBC Strategies: North American Enterprise Survey and its latest VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers Market Share and Forecast, which tracks residential/SOHO and business VoIP and unified communications (UC) services and ranks service providers by VoIP subscriber market share.

“The revenue that service providers derive from their residential and SOHO VoIP subscribers still eclipses what they get from businesses, but the business segment is growing about twice as fast, due in large part to the surging popularity of SIP trunking and hosted VoIP and UC services. Adoption of VoIP services across both the residential and business segments continues to grow, and we expect strong global growth in VoIP service revenue over at least the next five years,” expects Diane Myers, Directing Analyst for VoIP and IMS, Infonetics Research.

Some of the highlights of the VOIP and UC services market report include:

• Global service provider revenue from business and residential/SOHO VoIP services totalled nearly $58 billion in 2011, up 16 percent from the previous year

• The number of seats for hosted business VoIP and unified communications services is on track to more than double between 2012 and 2016

• SIP trunking service revenue jumped 128 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as businesses adopt SIP trunking for flexibility, centralisation of resources and cost effective voice connectivity

• Demand for cloud-based services helped push hosted PBX and UC service revenue up 33 percent and seats up 44 percent in 2011

• The number of residential and SOHO VoIP subscribers grew 14 percent in 2011, to over 178 million worldwide, as more households opt for no fixed-line voice connection

• Two years ago, Infonetics forecast residential VoIP subscribers to reach 176 million in 2011, accurate within 1 percent of the actual

• NTT retains its leadership as the world’s largest VoIP service provider in 2011, with close to 7 percent of global residential and SOHO subscribers, followed by Comcast and France Télécom

Infonetics’ biannual VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers report provides service provider VoIP subscriber market share and worldwide and regional market size, forecasts, and analysis of residential/SOHO (small office, home office) VoIP services and business VoIP and UC services (revenue, seats, trunks, subscribers). Business voice services tracked: managed IP PBX services, hosted VoIP and UC services and IP connectivity services). Service providers tracked: AT&T, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Embratel NetFone, France Télécom, KDDI, LG Dacom, LibertyGlobal, NTT, ONO, Optus, Rogers, SFR, SK Broadband, SoftBank, Tele2 Netherlands, Telecom Italia, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Vonage, and many others.

Some of the highlights of the SIP trunking and enterprise SBC survey highlights:

• Businesses continue to migrate to VoIP on their premises, but when it comes to calling outside their business, legacy technologies are not disappearing any time soon: T1 lines are still the most commonly used trunking service today, and will be in 2014

• However, the use of SIP trunking is growing: of the North American enterprises participating in Infonetics’ survey, a third use SIP trunks today, and a total of 42 percent plan to by 2014

• Centralisation, easier management, and switching as part of infrastructure upgrade top the list of reasons businesses are deploying SIP trunking

• The market for SIP trunking is wide open for providers to make their mark in SIP trunking, with no single provider dominating the landscape today: though incumbent providers AT&T and Verizon are in use by the most respondents, providers such as RingCentral, Comcast, Bandtel, Charter, 8x8, CenturyLink, and Sprint show up in survey responses as providers enterprises are evaluating

For its SIP Trunking and Enterprise SBC Strategies: North American Enterprise Survey, Infonetics’ surveyed 103 purchase-decision makers at medium and large enterprises about their deployment plans for SIP trunking and enterprise SBC services. The report includes analysis and end-user responses to questions about SIP trunking deployment models, reasons for and against deploying SIP trunking, capacity, interconnections, extensions, spending plans, IP PBX manufacturers and SIP trunking service providers used now and under evaluation, and top criteria for choosing a SIP trunking service provider.