Mainstream Recognition for Hosted IP Telephony and VoIP Access Services to Boost Revenue Growth

Frost: As the global economy expands and businesses boom, enterprises increasingly require next-generation telecommunication infrastructure and services. To meet this demand, legacy and next-generation carriers have launched hosted Internet Protocol (IP) telephony services in most countries of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Voice over IP (VoIP) access, or VoIP trunking, is equally popular as it offers service providers an opportunity to utilise VoIP technologies in order to penetrate the customer base of premise-based solutions.

The revenues in the EMEA Hosted IP telephony and VoIP Access Services Market totalled €589.7 million in 2005 and estimates them to reach €78.66 billion in 2011.

The major driver for IP telephony implementation is no longer limited to the reduction of long-distance telephony tariff; in addition, lower cost of ownership and reduction of risks are the main reasons driving enterprises to adopt hosted IP telephony services. Factors including changing market dynamics that necessitate effective communication infrastructure in enterprises and fast-paced technological advancements that fossilise existing technology, demand flexible and easily upgradeable solutions such as hosted IP telephony.

The ability of hosted IP telephony to co-exist with legacy infrastructure and facilitate a slow and steady migration to IP telephony is creating a strong case for VoIP adoption. Moreover, customers are gaining confidence as established vendors and service providers increasingly launch more solutions. VoIP vendors are also effectively dealing with problems including emergency services support, echo, latency and packet loss that are associated with the technology, thus alleviating customer concerns of poor performance as well as insufficient reliability.

Over the last 20 years, premise-based infrastructure has gained dominance over outsourced telephony services due to its better feature set and superior performance. This continues to threaten hosted IP telephony service providers, although IP tends to offset some of the advantages such as flexibility and location independence. Also, IP telecommunication has created several possibilities in this space and as a result, hosted IP telephony suppliers need to future-proof their products to prevent becoming outmoded.

Issue of control will become one of the prime restraining factors. Furthermore, industry participants need to collaborate in order to integrate various technologies and create a service that can provide ubiquitous access to users while hosted IP telephony suppliers need to build capabilities to be a part of this milieu.

Market participants need to educate end users and develop solutions that can bridge gaps in customer's communication needs while meeting the growth requirements of an enterprise. By fulfilling these consumer requirements, participants can expect steady demand in the future. The deregulation of markets and the privatisation of incumbent carriers combined with the availability of feature-rich hosted IP telephony platforms will also support revenue growth in this market.

EMEA Hosted IP telephony and VoIP Access Services Market

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