News reports continue to share insights into the phenomenal growth of VoIP services throughout the commercial and residential markets. The benefits of this communication platform are clear and growth shows no signs of waning. In fact, according to market analysis, revenue grew to $63 billion in 2012.

As the demand for big data continues to grow, migrating to a VoIP based system is even more attractive.

Despite the sheer number of VoIP providers around the world offering similarly priced services; it seems that only a few players have managed to stake significant market claim among consumers. However, time has proven time and again that a dominant market share doesn't always stay that way as shakeups in the tech world occur often.

According to a blog post from GetVoIP.com, Skype, Google (News - Alert) Talk and "paid services like Vonage" are the most talked about service providers. The post goes on to add that the trends associated with the uptake of these services must be examined in order to pinpoint where and when new developments may occur that shake up the VoIP market.

The percentage of enterprises using SIP trunking will surpass the percentage using legacy T1 lines in 2015, according to a survey of close to 300 firms by Infonetics Research.

Those who do not plan to deploy SIP trunking said they liked their existing voice services or that their existing service contract was not up for renewal.

For most of the enterprises using SIP trunking, the PBX connection is made natively; fewer than one-third make the connection using premise-based enterprise session border controllers (eSBCs), according to the survey.

"SIP trunking adoption is growing as businesses seek to improve the reliability and lower the cost of communication services.

CAMPBELL, California, October 4, 2012—Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers Market Share and Forecast, which tracks service providers and their VoIP and unified communications (UC) services revenue and subscribers.

ANALYST NOTE

“The SIP trunking and hosted UC segments were marked by strong growth and dynamic supplier landscapes in the first half of 2012,” notes Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research. “Beyond traditional operators and service providers, we’re seeing a growing number of PBX/UC vendors, enterprise agents, system integrators, and resellers expanding into hosted UC offerings.”

If one assumes a global requirement to invest $57 trillion in non-telecom infrastructure between 2013 and 2030, about 60 percent more than was invested in global infrastructure in the most recent 18 years, there are some rather obvious conclusions for telecom investment.

Competition for capital roads, power, bridges and other infrastructure will be severe. The telecom itself will need to invest about $9.5 trillion between 2013 and 2030, McKinsey Group estimates.

Given debt loads most countries face, it is not likely there will be too much extra funding available to help service providers create all that new infrastructure. So the growing trend of serious regulator thinking about how to create incentives for investment is not misplaced.

Source: IPCarrier

Global sales of VoIP (Voice over IP) and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) equipment rose for the first time in three years in 2012, increasing 9% year-to-year, according to Infonetics Research. A strong 4Q, particularly for IMS equipment, fueled the annual rise.

Global sales of carrier voice over IP (VoIP) and IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) equipment topped $800 million in 4Q12, thanks to a strong core of IMS, voice application servers, and softswitches.

Other key takeaways from Infonetics’ fourth quarter and year-end, “Service Provider VoIP and IMS Equipment and Subscribers” report include:

• IMS equipment sales made up just over 40% of total VoIP and IMS revenue in 2012, offsetting overall declines in legacy softswitch and trunk media gateways
• Though softswitches continue to decline on an annual basis, some operators are replacing early generation softswitches with new ones, opting not to switch to IMS
• For the full year, the Caribbean and Latin America region (CALA) posted the strongest growth of all regions, spiking 37%
• Huawei solidified its position atop the VoIP and IMS market share leaderboard in 2012, with around 1/5 of the global market; Alcatel-Lucent leapfrogged GENBAND to seize the #2 spot
• Standout vendors in terms of sequential revenue growth in 2012 include Alcatel-Lucent, BroadSoft, Ericsson, Huawei, Mavenir, Nokia Siemens Networks, and ZTE, all benefiting from the expansion of IMS networks

“As we predicted, after three years of annual declines, the carrier VoIP and IMS equipment market turned the corner in 2012,” commented Diane Myers, Infonetics’ principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS.

Leading Hi-Tech analyst house Juniper Research forecasts that there will be over 1 billion users of over the top (OTT) mobile VoIP services by 2017, reflecting a dramatic shift in how voice traffic is carried over the next five years.

A 'Second Wind' for Mobile VoIP

Juniper's new report found that improvements in network technology, increased competition and the move by telcos to join the OTT space will all come together to give the mobile "internet-voice" market a 'second wind'. However, as with Skype on the desktop, only a very small proportion will pay for the service, finds the report.

When put into the boxing ring, VoIP has come out as champion year upon year. We all know that the VoIP market has been progressively exploding onto the scene, but recent research now confirms for us just how much.

IBISWorld last month divulged in its “VoIP in the US” report that “VoIP experienced massive growth at the start of the past five-year period,” and that “the expansion of mobile broadband networks will open up new avenues for growth.” Furthermore, they report that “concentration in this industry has increased over the past five years,” which only further reflects the effectiveness of today’s players in the VoIP and wholesale VoIP space.

In short, the U.S.

The U.S. VoIP market has experienced a 16.7 percent annual growth rate over the last five years and generates $15 billion in annual revenue, according to IBISWorld's VoIP in the US report.

A full 65 percent of VoIP users in the United States get their VoIP service through cable companies such as Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), Cox, and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC). "Cable companies able to bundle VoIP service with cable service will fare best in consumer markets in the coming five years, while businesses will slowly but surely turn to VoIP for voice needs," according to the report.

Forecasting the future is a tough business, at least in part because people respond to changes in incentives, which in turn reshapes their behavior in non-linear ways. Many of you who follow trends in bandwidth are familiar with a basic rule suggesting that bandwidth consumption grows about 60 percent a year, globally or in most market segments.

It therefore is logical to assume continued growth at about that magnitude. But that might not be a safe assumption.

Mobile roaming, with growth powered especially by use of data services out of region, will grow to more than $80 billion by 2017, compared to $46 billion in 2012.

Mobile data will provide most of the growth, if not the absolute greatest volume of revenue, generating about $35 billion in revenue by 2017, when data roaming revenues will represent about eight percent of total mobile service provider revenues, says Juniper Research.

Still, that means voice roaming will account for $45 billion in 2017. Western Europe will continue to be the region where roaming revenue is the most significant revenue contributor.

Many global service providers now face a classic “fight or flight” choice. Faced with an immediate threat to life, humans experience physiological changes that prepare them to respond to an immediate stress by fighting or fleeing.

Some might argue that service providers now face similar choices. The “fight” response can be seen in service provider efforts to create their own over the top apps and otherwise invest in upgrading existing legacy services.

In the fourth quarter of 2012, total mobile connections globally stood at 6.8 billion, including machine-to machine (M2M) accounts, or 5.9 billion excluding M2M and inactive SIM cards, according to GSMA Wireless Intelligence.

The role of users with multiple subscriber identification modules (SIMs) cannot be overestimated. Wireless Intelligence estimates that consumers use an average of 1.85 SIM cards each.

That suggests the actual number of mobile users (not "accounts”) actually is about 3.2 billion, not 6.8 billion or 5.9 billion, other methods of counting might suggest.

Global penetration based on total connections is set to exceed 100 percent in 2013, with mobile subscriber penetration standing at only 45 percent by the end of 2012, Wireless Intelligence says.

The study found that future mobile subscriber growth will be driven by demand among currently “unconnected” populations in developing countries, particularly those in rural areas, which the research estimates to be 1.8 billion people throughout the next five years.

U.S. mobile penetration has hit 101 percent, meaning there are more mobile devices in use than there are people in the United States, according to the latest tally from CTIA-The Mobile Association. Among the headline findings:

There are some 321.7 million U.S. mobile subscriber connections, representing 101 percent penetration.

It is no secret that app providers and telecom, mobile, satellite and cable service providers "think different" about their respective "customer" bases and prospects. All access providers necessarily must work within frameworks set by regulators on a country by country, state by state or locality by locality basis.

There are franchises, certificates, spectrum or other regulatory requirements for being in business. That necessarily leads access provider executives to instinctively and logically think about services they can sell to people and businesses within their authorized areas of lawful service.