Talking SIP

A new survey by Juniper Research has found that notebook computers and e-readers will onload 24 percent of traffic onto data networks by 2016, Cellular-News reports.

The prevalence of game consoles, tablets, and smartphones will also increase the load placed on mobile networks, an amount of data reaching over 7,500 petabytes. The figure is due to the increasing prevalence of mobile devices, especially smartphones and tablets. Mobile broadband is also increasing penetration around the world, while wireline broadband seems to be slower to increase its use.

Smart phones represent a bit of a conundrum for mobile service providers. On one hand, smart phones drive sales of mobile data plans that are the primary source of new revenue at the moment.

On the other hand, most consumers do not want to pay full retail prices for the latest devices, preferring service contracts that amortize the cost of a device over time. But that raises service provider operating costs, since the subsidies typically are booked as a “cost of sales.”

Such contracts also reduce customer churn.

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) has released its 2012 ICT Market Review & Forecast (MR&F). The MR&F provides the ICT industry's most comprehensive, trusted data review, with forecasts through 2015.

Many findings from the report focus on the impact of the growth of smartphones and tablets, cloud-related services and video streaming. These devices and services are driving dramatic traffic surges and demanding increased network infrastructure investment.

Internet-generated broadband traffic will increase approximately 50 percent year over year on fixed networks and double on mobile networks.  IDC also notes that fixed and mobile traffic volumes are driven by power users.

IDC forecasts that end-user demand for worldwide wireline and mobile broadband traffic will increase from 9,665 petabytes per month in 2010 to 116,539 petabytes per month in 2015, or two orders of magnitude in just five years.

Web browsing, peer-to-peer file sharing, audio/video streaming, and a host of other applications are all driving bandwidth consumption.

Despite increased activity in the carrier VoIP and IP Multimedia Subsystem equipment market in the fourth quarter, the segment tracked down for the year, according to a new report from Infonetics.

The research company, in its quarterly Service Provider VoIP and IMS Equipment and Subscribers report attributed the 2 percent slide to poor performance in legacy trunk media gateway and softswitch sales.

Analyst Diane Myers said she expects the market to rebound in 2012.

"We'll see this trend shift starting this year as the high-growth market segments--including IMS core equipment and session border controllers--become collectively large enough to offset the ongoing declines of the legacy products."

According to the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index, worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold over the next five years, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month, an annual run rate of 130 exabytes, by 2016. The monthly 130 exabytes is equivalent to consumption of 33 billion DVDs; 4.3 quadrillion MP3 files (music/audio) or 813 quadrillion short message service (SMS) text messages.

The number of mobile Internet connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth (2016 world population estimate of 7.3 billion; source: United Nations) in 2016. Cisco also anticipates that global mobile data traffic will outgrow global fixed data traffic by three times in the 2011 to 2016 period.

As smartphone penetration deepens globally, mobile voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) solutions are becoming increasingly popular – with new findings that reveal mobile VoIP will continue to be on the rise in 2012.

According to research firm In-Stat (News - Alert), subscribers to mobile VoIP services will triple – active mobile VoIP subscriber rates will triple in 2011, growing from 9 million in 2010 to 29 million.

The key factor behind such a surge in demand for the technology is smartphone penetration, with numerous providers now offering services that give consumers access to mobile VoIP on some level.

“While VoIP is a well-defined market, mobile VoIP is still in its infancy, with most offerings only being developed over the past several years - and because it's in its nascent stage, there are significant opportunities for companies to develop the market,” explained Amy Cravens, senior analyst at In-Stat.

It’s time to look ahead to 2012 and be hopeful. Stay cool about the global turmoil. Instead be awed by the extraordinary technology of telecom and its life-changing impact on mobile commerce and payments. The game keeps changing, powered by smartphones, tablets, mobile apps and phone card enhancements.

In the next year, wireless services are poised to continue their spectacular growth.

Mobile services are crucial for communications service providers and other business partners in the communications ecosystem because of the growing dominance of mobile revenues. According to Ofcom, mobile service revenues now represent the majority of revenues in many countries.

Already above 50 percent, mobile revenues now are approaching 60 percent of total.

By some measures, service providers now make nearly as much money from mobile broadband services as they do from fixed broadband. Ofcom analysis

Over time, mobile broadband is likely to become even more important, if for no other reason than that mobile broadband is sold on a per-device, nearly a per-user basis, while fixed broadband is sold per household.

Global telecom capital investment dipped in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession, as you might expect. But what of the longer-term trend? Some believe telecom capex, on a global basis, will be steady and upward, reflecting growing revenue in many regions.

"The near-six percent increase in global telecom carrier capex we expect in 2011 over 2010 is due in part to AT&T’s ramping LTE deployments, HSPA+ upgrades, and investments in WiFi hotspots for traffic offload,” says Infonetics Research analyst Stéphane Téral.

This offsets Verizon Wireless' slowing mobile spending since their LTE rollout peaked earlier this year.

CAMPBELL, USA: Global service provider session border controller (SBC) market grew 45 percent in 2010 to $271 million and market research firm Infonetics Research projects it to top $1.0 billion by 2015 as IP voice traffic continues to grow strongly.

"Though traditionally deployed in fixed-line networks for residential and business VoIP service access (including trunking), the use of session border controllers for interconnection between service providers continues to expand as the world's voice networks increasingly go all-IP. Our latest survey confirms that two of the biggest growth areas for new SBC deployments over the next two years are fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) and wireless access," notes Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research.

SIP trunking is the #1 SBC application used by service providers and will continue to be through 2013, followed by interconnecting to other service providers and residential VoIP.

In the 10 years from 2005 to 2015, telecom service provider revenue has shown and will continue to show year-over-year growth every year except in 2009, according to Infonetics.

Following a 4.1 percent increase in 2010 over 2009, telecom service provider revenue will grow 7.6 percent in 2011, to $1.86 trillion. Infonetics revenue forecast.

Telecom carrier revenue is forecast by Infonetics to grow to $2.17 trillion in 2015, driven by mobile broadband.

Mobile VoIP specialists are expected to favor alliances with social media, gaming and software partners over partnerships with mobile network operators in coming years, as social media becomes ever more mainstream, finds Juniper Research.

Juniper Research anticipates that the role of voice within the broader communications market will change, and it will become increasingly available as an extension to other applications. Companies such as Vivox are pioneering such services in the gaming industry, and Skype's acquisition by Microsoft and several Facebook alliances with VoIP providers will accelerate this trend, finds the report 'Mobile Voice & Video Calling: Strategic Opportunities & Business Models 2011-2016'.

Meanwhile mVoIP clients downloaded to the smartphone will account for four fifths of 640 million mobile VoIP users by the end of 2016, as momentum behind carrier alliances and mVoIP start-ups diminishes.

Improved technology, more intuitive interfaces and increased user awareness all account for the increasing dominance of the app download model for mVoIP, finds Juniper Research.

Further findings include:

• The number of mobile video calling users will exceed 130 million by 2016, spurred by the launch of mobile video calling by major players and technology improvements.
• Mobile VoIP and mobile video calling services will develop significantly faster in developed markets due to a correlation between 3G and 4G roll outs and the take up of mobile VoIP and mobile video calling.
• There is as yet no clear role for advertising within the mobile VoIP and mobile video calling business model, though this is beginning to come for VoIP on the desktop.

The mPublishing whitepaper is available to download from the Juniper website together with further details of the full report.

Source: VoIP Monitor

The latest research from market research firm Infonetics Research (News - Alert) finds that Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services market will reach upwards of $76 billion in revenues by 2015. The growth will be primarily driven by Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) trunking and hosted business VoIP services.

According to the report, revenue from SIP trunking services to businesses is expected to grow at a phenomenal 52 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2011 to 2015.

SMBs continue to look ahead at future growth, but a sluggish economy has them looking harder for products that help them reduce costs, according to a new survey conducted by hosted VoIP provider 8x8 (Nasdaq: EGHT).

The survey, which looked at new 8x8 customers who subscribed to the company's VoIP service between May 1 and August 19, showed business customers most concerned about reducing costs, attracting new customers and hiring and affording new employees.

The amount of concern over reducing costs appeared to deepen over the summer, the company said.

More than half (55 percent) of respondents in August indicated they were "more concerned" about business expenses this year than last.