VoIP Gateways

The session border controller market is experiencing continuous strong growth and is attracting investment, according to Greg Collins, founder and principal analyst at research firm Exact Ventures.

In its newly released report, the research firm says that the total next generation network (NGN) voice and IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) core market contracted 20 percent sequentially in 3Q11 to $1.5 billion.

Exact Ventures notes that this contraction is partly due to several factors such as seasonal weakness and delays in capital spending.

Few of these factors are expected to boost volatility in the IMS Core market. The report also indicates that during this period, business VoIP continued to fuel the growth categories in the wireline voice core market.

Enterprise session border controller (E-SBC) and voice application server (VAS) sales partially offset declines in other wireline voice core product categories, notes the research firm.

Exact Ventures is an independent market intelligence and advisory firm, publishing quarterly market analysis and forecast reports covering the NGN Voice, IMS Core, Wireless Packet Core, Evolved Packet Core, and Diameter Signaling Controller (DSC) markets.

The IMS core equipment market was up year-over-year despite its contracting on a sequential basis. Looking forward, the market growth is set to accelerate in 2012.

This growth will happen because IMS is gradually displacing NGN voice equipment and voice-over-LTE (News - Alert) deployments is beginning to boost the market.

"The SBC market continues to experience strong growth and to attract investment. Metaswitch recently entered the market with its new Perimeta product line and Avaya (News - Alert) acquired security and E-SBC vendor Sipera to bolster its Aura unified communications portfolio and specifically its SIP Trunking solutions," said Collins.

"Such investment is likely to continue, as VoIP services still comprise less than one quarter of fixed lines and a negligible amount of wireless lines. As the transition to VoIP continues, so will the growth of the SBC and VAS market segments."