While recent research from In-Stat (News - Alert) finds that small business spending on wireline voice services will approach $16 billion by 2015, that number may be threatened by the increased use of VoIP services and VoIP equipment purchases.

According to In-Stat, the figure represents nearly 50 percent of the entire wireline voice services spending. Small businesses that have five to 99 employees account for around half the GDP and more than half the employment in the U.S.

Among these businesses, the hospitality and food vertical will spend the most on wireline voice services, reaching $2 billion by 2012, according to In-Stat’s research titled, “US Business Spending by Size of Business and Vertical, 2010-2015: Wireline Voice Services.

However, wireline voice services could be hit by alternate technologies like VoIP, which reduces the costs of international long distance communications.

"Wireline voice, although not growing in any significant way, is holding steady across all sizes of business," said Greg Potter of In-Stat. "One service segment we see that could be vulnerable due to alternative technologies like VoIP, is international long distance services. Even though the total dollar spend remains high, we see negative growth over the forecast period."

In-Stat also found that total toll-free service expenditures will increase by $134 million over the five-year forecast period. Enterprise spending in the government segment will reach $4.7 billion by 2015 while SOHO will spend $267 million on other services in 2015, which includes audio-conferencing services, outbound calling services, and pre-paid calling.

The research provides forecasts of US business wireline voice services spending for the 2010-15 period with detailed segmentation by product category, size of business, and vertical market.

A recent blog from TMCnet states that (landline) VoIP now has over 120 million subscribers worldwide and its growth looks set to accelerate as predictions indicate a $40 billion annual VoIP market by 2015. The findings were released by Point Topic's recent analysis.

Point Topic’s data also revealed a global growth in VoIP of 12.6 percent during 2010 and shows that there is plenty of headroom left for VoIP around the world.