Some quick research news from Infonetics to share on carrier VoIP equipment. Worldwide next gen voice product revenue jumped 18% to $614 million between the first and second quarters of 2005, a new record for a quarterly gain, and is up 55% year-over-year, according to Infonetics Research's latest report, Service Provider Next Gen Voice Equipment. Annual revenue is forecast to grow to $5.7 billion by 2008.

All segments of the next gen voice market are up year-over-year, and all but softswitch class 4 and media servers are up from 1Q05.

"Growth in equipment sales is very strong as carriers continue down the network modernization and service innovation path," said Kevin Mitchell, directing analyst at Infonetics Research. "We upped our North American subscriber forecast and added a European subscriber forecast. In both regions, we expect penetration of VoIP to near 40% in 2008."

North American residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers jump from 1.1 million in 2004 to 24.3 million in 2008, with over 6 million new subscribers added in 2006, 2007, and 2008. In Europe, VoIP subscribers multiply from 2.2 million in 2004 to 27.8 million in 2008, with close to 8 million new subscribers in 2007 and 2008.

2Q05 Highlights
- Worldwide softswitch revenue totaled $247.9 million, up 15% from 1Q05 and 106% from 2Q04, with all growth due to class 5 applications
- Nortel leads in worldwide media gateway and softswitch revenue market share, followed by Siemens and Sonus
- Worldwide session border controller sessions totaled 1.1 million, a 10% sequential increase and an 82% increase from 2Q04

Infonetics' report tracks VoIP subscribers, media servers, session border controllers, trunk media gateways, voice application servers, softswitches, and class 5 packet switches.

Companies tracked include Acme Packet, Alcatel, AudioCodes, BayPackets, Broadsoft, Brooktrout, Carrius, CIRPACK, Cisco, Convedia, CopperCom, DiTech, Ericsson, Huawei, IPeria, IP Unity, Italtel, Juniper, Lucent, Marconi, MetaSwitch, Mera, NeoTIP, NetCentrex, Netrake, NexTone, NewCross, Nortel, Pactolus, Persona, Sansay, sentitO, Siemens, Sonus, Sylantro, Tekelec, Ubiquity, UTStarcom, Veraz, Xener, others.

Download sample data at www.info.infonetics.com.