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Tag: ip-telephony

  • Hosted Communications Services Present Excellent Growth Opportunities to European Service Providers

    Although the on-premise model with its control and security advantages will dominate the enterprise communications market in the immediate future, the revenue share of hosted services is poised to increase significantly, according to Frost & Sullivan. Hosted communications services present an ever more popular alternative for deploying IP telephony and unified communications applications.

    New analysis from Frost & Sullivan – European Hosted IP Telephony and Unified Communications Services Market – finds that the hosted IP telephony market in Europe earned revenues of €0.9 billion in 2010 and estimates this to reach €4.9 billion in 2016.

    "The hosted IP telephony and UC services market in Europe is witnessing rapid growth mainly due to the increasing awareness about hosted solutions and improved feature sets," notes Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Dorota Oviedo. "The economic slowdown and limited capital availability for investments urged many enterprises to consider alternative communications delivery methods."

    Once companies experience the actual functionality and service level offered, they become more comfortable with communications being delivered as a service. Services are becoming more mature, offering a complete PBX capability rather than the limited functionality of Centrex solutions previously witnessed in the market.

    "With the economy rebounding, companies will continue using hosted IP telephony services," adds Oviedo. "At the same time, they are also expected to complement them with new communications and collaboration applications."

    The European hosted IP telephony and UC services market is highly fragmented. All the major enterprise communications providers and vendors show interest in tapping this opportunity to leverage the strong customer demand for operational expenditure (OPEX)-based solutions.

    However, building a distribution channel is one of the key challenges faced by this growing industry.

    "Channel partners need to be educated on the benefits of predictable revenues based on recurring monthly revenues and commissions, which are less sensitive to the general economic fluctuations and will increase as hosted services gain traction," concludes Oviedo.

  • IP Desktop Market Revenues to Decline Until 2011


    The IP telephony endpoint market will be affected by the economic downturn – despite the fact an increasing number of enterprises are recognizing the benefits of both IP desktop phones and enterprise soft clients.

    That’s the conclusion of Melanie Turek, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, which has just released its latest global study of the sector’s enterprise market.

    She says that IP desktop phones are rapidly proliferating in the enterprise, displacing their analog and digital predecessors.

    Today, this is largely due to declining prices and clear productivity benefits, according to Turek.

    "Last year, we anticipated that PC soft phones offered a natural transition to more sophisticated UC clients," she said in her No Jitter blog.

    Melanie Turek, principal analyst Frost & Sullivan

    "Today, we can confirm that this new generation of soft clients is quickly penetrating the market, often replacing their old counterparts."

    Turek said that thanks to the strong case around UC and the continued shift from hardware-based to software-based solutions, more telephony vendors are aggressively pursuing bundling strategies.

    This includes combining platforms, server software, advanced UC clients, and access to either a-la-carte or bundled applications.

    She said this has considerably boosted the penetration of enterprise soft clients such as PC desktop soft phones, advanced desktop UC clients, and mobile clients (FMC and UC).

    The world enterprise IP desktop phone market continued to grow in 2008, generating USD $2.57 billion in total revenues, a 3.1 per cent increase over 2007, according to the Frost & Sullivan report.

    Steady revenue decline is expected until the end of 2010, but the market is expected to gradually recover by 2011 and continue with a healthy growth pattern until at least 2015.

    Turek said the world enterprise IP soft client market has more than doubled its size, from 1.0 million units shipped in 2007, to almost 2.4 million clients in 2008.

    "This prominent increase in client shipments has been driven not so much by a swell of customer demand, but rather by the effective penetration strategies that many IP telephony providers have been implementing," she said.

    As a result, Frost & Sullivan estimates that less than 45 per cent of total enterprise soft clients shipped in 2008 are being used as a primary tool for voice communications.

    Although PC desktop softphone revenues are expected to considerably decrease over time as UC offerings penetrate the market, the higher profit margins granted by advanced UC clients and mobile FMC/UC clients are expected to largely offset this revenue decline.

  • IP Players Create Recession Strategies As 2008 Revenues Fall


    Customer spending on new IP lines and desktop gear declined significantly last year in North America compared with 2007.

    Much of the downturn during 2H08 can be attributed to fewer orders from three key verticals devastated by the recession: financial services, manufacturing and retail, according to research from T3i Group LLC.

    The report confirms all sectors of the telecommunications manufacturing industry have been affected negatively by the global economic situation.

    However, it says the major North American networking suppliers – Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Mitel and NEC – have crafted ways to survive the downturn.

    According to report "InfoTrack for Enterprise Communications Full Year 2008 Report", the decline led to US manufacturer revenues in 2008 totalling USD $3.7 billion, down 11 per cent from 2007, while Canadian revenues for 2008 totaled USD $289 million, down 8 per cent from 2007.

    The InfoTrack report also found total average selling prices (ASP) were down 1 per cent in 2008, with IP platform prices dropping 4 per cent due to reduced demand resulting from capex cutbacks and the shutdowns of unprofitable business locations.

    IP revenues in total fell 7 per cent during the 12-month period, although smaller key system pricing remained stable (down less than 1 per cent) due to the addition of embedded IP, wireless and applications functionality.

    Bob Olson, Voice Technologies Analyst at T3i Group, said there could be a near-term solution to slowed IP telephony spending: monies promised in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as the stimulus package).

    "Fortuitously, the biggest winner for the telecom sector in the appropriations portion of the final 2009 stimulus bill is infrastructure, with nearly USD $137 billion targeted for miscellaneous improvements, including USD $9 billion to expand broadband Internet access," he said.

    "The justification for the USD $9 billion is based on building a level playing field for rural programs, including schools, libraries and hospitals. All that translates into new software and hardware sales."

  • INTERVIEW: Carrie Hartford Fedders From IPsmarx Technology








    IPsmarx was named as joint winner of the 2008 voip-biz.news Product of the Year Award last week for its SIP-based calling card platform.

    Carrie Hartford Fedders, account manager with IPsmarx, spoke to voip-biz.news about the solution, which eliminates the need for a VoIP gateway and PSTN lines using DID (Direct Inward Dialing) technology.

    She said that removing the need for a gateway in the network reduced both initial costs and overheads for operators.

    This meant savings could be made on initial investment of between 30-40 per cent compared to a calling card and gateway solution.

    As well as being more feature rich, the new platform also gives operators the flexibility to use fewer channels and upgrade when needed – as opposed to paying for T1/E1 lines.

    "When our sales people are talking to prospective clients, the main challenge is to convince them that they do not need a gateway in the network," she said.

    "People are so used to having it that they don’t believe it’s no longer required.

    "We really do feel that we are on the cusp of this new technology.

    "It’s a very innovative solution, which others are not offering."

    IPsmarx was founded in 2001 and initially offered a calling card platform designed for enterprises that needed a more effective way to manage their billing.

    Hartford Fedders said it grew quickly from there, with the company’s in-house developers continually adding new and more advanced features.

    The development progressed with the addition of a software switch.

    "Now we have all different kinds of solutions that enable businesses to offer VoIP and Calling card systems, the latest being our SIP-based platform," she said.

    While not needing a gateway in the network has streamlined equipment requirements, it has also added flexibility to the platform.

    Hartford Fedders said that in situations where a client’s business was growing, adding new capacity and lines was no longer a time-consuming and costly business.

    "Now you simply have to upgrade the software license with us and order more DIDs," she said.

    "So the long-term benefits are very attractive to our clients."

    Since the IPsmarx platform takes advantage of SIP Based DID technology, operators can provide calling card services to customers worldwide, where DIDs are available, and they only need one platform.

    Hartford Fedders said they had clients in 62 countries around the world, with the main markets being in North America, Latin America and the UK.

    "Every region demands different features and operators have certain fees they like to apply to a service in a particular country," she said.

    IPsmarxs portfolio of VoIP and IP telephony solutions and services includes:

    * Prepaid and Postpaid Calling Card and Residential Solutions
    * Softswitch IP-IP Billing Solution
    * CallShop and Hosted CallShop Solution
    * VoIP Termination Solution
    * Wholesale Carrier Solution
    * Carrier Services
    * VoIP Network Integration, Configuration and Migration Solution


  • The Future Of HD VoIP Is Video


    HD VoIP is rapidly gaining followers but the possibilities for excellent sound quality aren’t its only benefits.

    Jeffery Rodman, Polycom co-founder and CTO of the Voice Division, believes that video will quickly become a "must-have" feature of HD voice technology.

    In an interview on HD VoIP with smithonvoip he said the proliferation of HD calling was being driven by people’s need to communicate effectively.

    But as it became more mainstream the benefits of adding video to the mix would become glaringly apparent.

    "Because it’s an IP network, video is coming sooner than anyone thinks," he said.

    "It’s interesting how that works; seems like video might just be a frill, but when you actually see and use it, there’s a part of you that leaps forward and thinks ‘that’s what I’ve been missing’.”

    Rodman said virtually everything listened to today, from FM radio and CD’s, to television and even oven timers, is already wideband audio.

    The phone – a critical tool in business – had become the last holdout of poor audio.

    He said once people heard about HD Voice, they discover that it’s a simple, robust, and economical enhancement of the system they already have.

    "More and more VoIP telephones are including HD Voice in their basic function sets because it adds value and helps efficiency without significantly affecting cost," he said.

  • Europe's VoIP Services Growing Rapidly


    VoIP services in Europe are growing at a blistering pace and reshaping the fixed-line market, according to a report from TeleGeography.

    Consumer IP telephony subscribers reached 25.3 million at year-end 2007, up from 15 million in 2006, and only 6.5 million in 2005.

    As a result, revenues were projected to top USD $5.7 billion in 2008, up from USD $4.2 billion in 2007.

    Prices for triple play service in the US are approximately 70 per cent higher than in Europe, which accounts for VoIP adoption in Europe growing far faster than in the US.

    While customers continue to flock to VoIP services, market penetration in the 13 countries surveyed varies greatly.

    France leads the way in adoption of VoIP, as TeleGeography estimates that 42 per cent of the population has a VoIP line, while Spain’s VoIP uptake is only 2 per cent.

    All adoption statistics are based on fixed-line replacement VoIP installation, excluding VoIP soft clients like Skype.

    Skype has more subscribers in Europe than any individual provider of handset-based VoIP services, but the revenues and traffic volumes generated by Skype’s subscribers are lower and have a much smaller impact on incumbent’s revenues.

    Expect continued strong growth in VoIP revenue in Europe, as there are several large markets with low penetration currently, including Austria and Spain.

    TeleGeography’s European VoIP & Triple-Play Research Service is the authoritative source of data on consumer VoIP services and service providers in western Europe.