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Visiongain (News - Alert), a business intelligence company based in the U.K., released a new report on the future of mobile VoIP recently in a 163-page report titled, “Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Market Forecast 2014-2019: Prospects for Mobile (mVoIP) vs. Static VoIP.”

While mobile VoIP services like Skype (News - Alert) are rapidly adding subscribers, it’s been difficult to generate a lot of revenue from them, even as over-the-top services continue to make carriers nervous.

Visiongain said that these companies were engaged in a “race to the bottom” where success is measured in subscribers rather than revenue. On the other hand, these services have unique and diverse revenue streams.

OTT services also have higher engagement with their customers, rather than carriers. People seem to care more about their devices and the apps they use rather than the carriers they run them on.

“Since 2011, the VoIP market has changed drastically due to the introduction of highly innovative and effective mVoIP applications,” a company statement said. “Thanks to these, the global VoIP market has seen a radical increase in the number of subscriptions, especially since 2011 when various applications were commercially launched in the APAC region.”

Static VoIP providers, on the other hand, have had more steady growth, and are expected to make up 96 percent of the growth of the VoIP to come from this sector.

Visiongain expected carriers to fight back against OTT services. One example would be the fight over “net neutrality” rules in the U.S., with broadband providers trying to use measures to keep customers from using services like Netflix. These providers are also fighting back, reaching out to both the public and lawmakers to keep net neutrality.

According to Visiongain, carriers have to face reality and embrace OTT providers, while at the same time improving their own services to keep customers.