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It seems as though 2014 will be the year of VoLTE after all, according to a new report from Dell’ (News - Alert)Oro Group. Indeed, the research firm for the networking and telecommunications industries has reported that spending in voice core key growth segments, LTE (News - Alert) and IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) core will continue to increase over the next five years.

In other words, spending related to voice over LTE is expected to be strong in the coming years — strong enough even to stabilize overall voice equipment revenue.

This isn’t too surprising considering the fact that Infonetics Research (News - Alert) expected there to be eight million VoLTE subscribers by the end of 2013 — before U.S. operators had even made the big VoLTE debut.

“We expect that cumulative revenue generated from newer Session Border Controller, Voice Application Servers and IP Multimedia Subsystem Core systems will far exceed that from more mature Softswitch, Media Gateway (News - Alert) and Mobile Switching Center systems over the next five years,” said Chris DePuy, vice president at Dell'Oro Group, in a statement. “As these new systems are deployed at service providers, we expect these operators will be faced with the decision whether to use vendor-supplied hardware or to use off-the-shelf server systems and vendor supplied Network Function Virtualization software systems.”

DePuy added that, while the transition to NFV will result in near-term risks for operators and vendors, it should ultimately result in more efficient network operations. This isn’t entirely unexpected either as NFV has gained about as much attention as VoLTE over the last year for good reason: It offers clear benefits over traditional telecommunications hardware.

All in all, the rising up of new technologies like NFV and VoLTE should see the SBC and VAS markets achieve a compound annual growth rate greater than 10 percent over the next five years, according to Dell’Oro.