Report Pegs VoIP to 40% of business lines by '09

According to a recent report published by IDATE, a European information and communications technologies consultancy, VoIP will continue to grow rapidly, culminating in 40% of business lines to be operating over IP by 2009.

We’ve all heard the reasoning behind the decision to move from TDM to IP. This is not news:
• a single network to manage;
• lower price of infrastructure;
• lower MAC and maintenance costs; and most importantly,
• the ability to quickly and efficiently create and deploy new services.

But the report does cite the high potential of VoIP, and points out the following overriding trends:

• By 2009 close to 40% of business lines will be IP-based (180 million lines), regardless of the solution used, which will mean the disappearance of close a third of classic analogue and ISDN lines.
• Centrex (hosted) services will generate roughly 4.5 billion EUR in revenues in 2009.
• Revenues generated by calling will drop by close to 50%.
• Conference type services, directory management and XML applications will generate 4.9 billion EUR in sales.

And yet, there are several factors, according to IDATE, that will continue to act as a brake in the overall adoption of IP telephony in the marketplace.

• Initial investment. IP phones in particular are more expensive than standard phones. IP solutions carry an added cost (as compared to a classic solution) of between 25% and 30%.
• Security. Viral attacks, intrusions and eavesdropping are all sources of great concern. The costs of securing an IP-based telephony solution carries additional costs as well.
• The difficulty of calculating ROI and TCO. Precise calculations might be difficult, considering the difficulty in establishing the benefits of introducing new features.

I for one see many hurdles ahead for VoIP adoption, but these hurdles can and will be overcome. It’s only a matter of time. Our industry has always held the belief that it’s not a question of if but a question of when “telephony” will become “IP telephony.” That remains true today. We can no sooner stop the evolution of telecom than we can stop any of the hurricanes from pummeling the Caribbean and Southern U.S.