VoIP News: General VoIP

VoIP phones and other alternatives to traditional landline and mobile networks are increasingly being used to make international telephone calls, Ovum has said.

International calls have traditionally been highly profitable for telecoms companies, but this revenue is now under threat from cheaper options like VoIP solutions, according to the IT industry analyst firm.

Over 30 million international calls are made from the UK to areas outside the European Economic Area (EEA) every year. The international call market was worth £2.16 billion in 2009.

Mobile operators take 58 per cent of international call revenue, but account for only 26 per cent of the traffic. Landlines take 27 per cent and provide 27 per cent.

IP telephony solutions provide 18 per cent, yet take just one per cent. Ovum believe mobile VoIP could "wipe out" expensive international mobile calls as higher quality services become available.

Emeka Obiodu, senior analyst at Ovum, said: "As they do, the appeal of making direct calls from the mobile phone will lessen, threatening revenues for the mobile operators."

The speed, reliability and multimedia functionality that 4G would bring to mobile applications like VoIP means that mobile customers want it now, BroadbandIgnite said recently.

Wireless is still mainly used for voice services, despite the emergence of data-focused devices like Apple's new iPad, TMCnet has said.

"Voice still is, and will be, the killer app, all Twitter to the contrary aside," said David Sims, contributing editor at the communications and technology community.

This is a concern for traditional mobile operators, as their new data-centric networks are not made for high quality voice calls, even though they supply the majority of their revenue.

However, an antidote to this issue has now become available in the form of mobile IP telephony solutions that specialise in delivering VoIP traffic to wireless users.

These solutions bypass circuit-switched 2G networks and allow advanced voice and data transmissions via IP networks, cutting operators' costs and potentially offering consumers savings by using free, public airwaves.

By using unlicensed spectrums, these services can circumnavigate limited spectrum availability, enabling mobile operators to make VoIP solutions widely accessible, thus increasing mobile internet demand.

Technology market intelligence company ABI Research recently predicted that mobile internet revenues will grow as take-up of mobile VoIP and other web-based smartphone apps accelerates.

Cisco has launched a new carrier routing system which will help to speed the distribution of VoIP traffic across the internet.

The CRS-3 (Carrier Routing System 3) cabinet is capable of delivering a data transmission rate which is, according to Cisco, twelve times the capacity of its nearest competing system and three times the capacity of current Cisco products.

The device will allow VoIP and video VoIP to be disseminated at speeds of up to 322Tbit/s (Terabits per second), allowing for multiple streaming high-definition video calls and more voice calls than you can feasibly count.

The system will go hand in hand with the proposed new 100Gbit/s (Gigabit per second) broadband networks, which are on the charts for future broadband deployments in a number of countries. Over the next few years Google has announced that it plans to trial a 100Gbit/s network across parts of the USA and products like the CRS-3 will play a role in this, providing the backhaul infrastructure for fast and accurate VoIP transmission.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a key driver to businesses adopting unified communications (UC), Telappliant has said.

Tan Aksoy, CEO and founding director of the VoIP business solutions provider, said that a VoIP UK telecoms platform is a "primary requirement" of any business looking at UC.

VoIP also drives UC uptake because telecom expenditure is "the first thing people look at when saving costs" as it is one of the biggest business overheads, Mr Aksoy added.

He predicted that the UC environment would see "further convergence" in 2010, with combined voice, mobile and video delivering a "single communications experience".

Mr Aksoy was speaking yesterday at the enterprise business communications event UC Expo in London, which concludes today.

IP telephony solutions are still the fastest growing part of the enterprise voice market, Synergy Research Group has said.

VoIP solutions made up almost 70 per cent of the total telephony market last year, according to figures from the market research company.

The rest of the total telephony market was made up by legacy sectors such as PBX and KTS telephone systems.

However, the enterprise voice market, which includes IP PBX, IP/TDM PBX, and VoIP phones, fell by over 23 per cent in Western Europe in 2009.

The growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 was stronger than any quarter since the fourth quarter of 2007 though, while the second half of the year showed solid improvement.

Increased competition and limited customer spending due to economic turmoil meant that the prospects of IP telephony vendors varied over the course of the year.

Many businesses already using IP telephony solutions spent last year fortifying the proportion of their voice services dedicated to VoIP phones, In-Stat said recently.

The market intelligence company's research also found that the proportion of businesses with VoIP capabilities but no traditional TDM voice services rose in 2009.