Future of VoIP Assured Notwithstanding Saturation

For companies trying to cut costs, VoIP is a viable option, and for residents, it is a phenomenal leap into the future of communications. The latest figures from industry analysts, Point Topic, seem to reiterate this fact and even service providers are finding VoIP critical for penetrating the consumer market.  

Point Topic’s Senior Analyst, John Bosnell, claimed in a press release that in just the first half of 2010, the number of VoIP subscribers have increased by 12 million. The growth of VoIP is so rapid that it is unthinkable to subscribe to broadband without a VoIP service being thrown in. 

Bosnell cited France Telecom as an example where stand-alone broadband was not common. Fierce competition had ISPs falling over each other to provide bundled services, which included VoIP. This has led consumers to expect low cost add on services from their respective ISPs and VoIP was relatively easy and affordable. However, this meant that more than 70 percent of French household now had a VoIP service, and that particular segment suffered from saturation. 

That being the case, Bosnell commented that as there were not many targets left amongst French broadband subscribers and as other markets were quickly converting much of their remaining subscriber base ,there were significant absentees from the ‘top 10’ chart.

Painting the VoIP picture elsewhere, Bosnell added that China, the largest broadband market had only one bundled VoIP service for every 20 broadband subscriptions, while U.S. closed in on one in Three, leaving plenty of headroom there and around the world. At the end of 2009 just under $15 billion a year was being generated by VoIP most often as part of a bundled subscription. This is almost double the revenue generated by Security, the next nearest value-added service.

Bosnell concluded by saying that VoIP was attractive to consumers as it was priced very competitively in terms of call charges and subscriptions. Operators also found it attractive as it provided an opportunity to differentiate their services. It was reasonable to expect that VoIP would have about 200 million subscribers by 2015, and unless the saturation point was reached, the market for VoIP should be positive.

Point Topic is the primary Web source for DSL, FTTx, cable and other broadband supplier and user statistics, databases, information and reports with a range of online services that provide the most up-to-date, accurate and cost effective worldwide and U.K. specific broadband datasets available.

Mini Swamy is a contributing editor for virtual-pbx. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jaclyn Allard