Threatened by falling income from traditional phone service, more and more service providers are looking to voice over IP to help them beef up revenue generation, says US based Infonetics Research in a new study, Service Provider Plans for Next Gen Voice & IMS.
According to the study, 83% of the North American, European, Asia Pacific, and Central and Latin American service providers interviewed by Infonetics rated the availability of new applications and services the highest among drivers for adopting VoIP products, confirming that new revenue is the main reason they are migrating circuit-switched voice networks to packet networks.
"No longer is VoIP being offered only by specialist providers and VoIP pioneers, but by all types of providers in all regions of the world," said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics for service provider VoIP, IMS, and FMC. "Next gen voice services have elevated from lab curiosity to market reality.
Still, this will not be an overnight process; replacing installed legacy gear in high teledensity areas like North America and Western Europe will take at least 10 to 15 years. In these areas, many carriers are letting their legacy equipment slowly churn while using VoIP now as an augmentation or an alternative, or when more capacity or expansion to a new location is needed.
Meanwhile, new entrants to the VoIP market and incumbents in regions like Eastern Europe and South East Asia that are bringing teledensity up to average levels are deploying next gen voice as their primary platform."