TMCnews Featured Article

Voice over Internet Protocol has been available for quite some time as a low cost, high quality alternative to traditional landline communications. With recent adoption throughout the global marketplace, it is on track to become the dominate voice communication form. Will it replace landlines in the future, requiring all businesses to invest in the IP softswitch?

The common theme is that VoIP will eventually dominate and traditional phone systems will go the way of the VHS recorder. Let’s take a look at a few statistics recently shared in an IT Toolbox blog post.

The growth in mobile VoIP usage is certainly helping to drive this trend. In-Stat (News - Alert), a market research firm, recently estimated that mobile VoIP users will total 288 million by the end of 2013. These applications rely on the phone’s data plan to complete calls or a local hotpot or Wi-Fi connection if available. When this becomes the dominate choice, voice options on current plans become obsolete. By 2017, Juniper Research (News - Alert) anticipates that mobile VoIP users will hit 1 billion. 

Services for unified communications and hosted VoIP are expected to double by the year 2016, according to data from Infonetics (News - Alert) Research. Limitations to this growth could be found in broadband strength, although satisfied users are likely to expand their networks to accommodate additional demand.

Industry values are also rising. According to IBISWorld, the contribution to a company when VoIP is in place is projected to increase every year by 15.3 percent until 2017. At that point, a number of new jobs are expected to be created within the industry. Even as some industries are still struggling to recover from the recent recession, VoIP appears to be thriving and will continue to do so.

Market growth and more subscribers are also expected in the near future. Infonetics Research (News - Alert) suggests that the combination of residential and business VoIP services will reach $74.5 billion in value by 2015. This increased value will be the result of more demand and the added value VoIP brings to the business.

Is the time right to embrace VoIP? Projections in the industry suggest that it is on the positive track – will this trend continue? Experts in the market, as demonstrated here, do believe the future is very bright for VoIP communications and the IP softswitch. The better question may be what leading companies can do with this kind of power driving their communications.