VoIP Equipment Market Finally Shows Growth

The traditional landline has been dying a slow death as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) continues to enjoy widespread adoption. Businesses especially are finding significant benefits when they combine the voice network with the data network and integrate key processes as a result.

As much as VoIP can deliver efficiency and cost benefits for the enterprise or small business, the VoIP equipment market was struggling to produce a positive gain for the past few years. After three years of consistent declines, the trend has finally turned toward a gain as the market grew nine percent in 2012 thanks to strong IMS sales.

These findings are from Infonetics (News - Alert) Research market share and forecast excerpt. The firm’s Service Provider VoIP and IMS Equipment and Subscribers report provides insight into 4th quarter and year-end results. A full detailed analysis is expected March 4.

According to Diane Myers, Infonetics Research (News - Alert) principal analyst for VoIP, UC and IMS, it’s still early in overall market maturity for IMS equipment and LTE applications. As highlighted in this Infonetics Research release, a small number of operators are placing orders for equipment, which is positively impacting overall revenue.

Myers anticipates that this spike is just the beginning of what is to come in the next few years as wireless operators look to implement voice over LTE (News - Alert) (VoLTE).

As for now, further quarter 2012 sales of carrier VoIP and IMS equipment topped $800 million as the demand for voice application servers, IMS and softswitches continues to grow. Just over 40 percent of total IMS and VoIP equipment revenue in 2012 was claimed by IMS equipment sales. As softswitches continue to decline, early generation softswitches are being replaced as operators elect not to switch to IMS.

This movement in the market indicates that operators and business owners are paying attention to the VoIP market and the benefits it can deliver. Simply moving voice communications across the data network is not enough to ensure quality communications, however. VoIP monitoring must be in place to ensure voice quality is at optimal levels, cost-efficiency is realized to its fullest and processes are actually simplified. The deployed voice technologies must deliver reliable, high quality interactions or the benefits VoIP was designed to deliver are quickly negated.

To that end, VoIP monitoring solutions should keep pace with VoIP implementations on the enterprise and carrier sides, ensuring communications maintain expected levels. Whether VoIP is delivered as a hosted solution or implemented as an on-premise infrastructure, the right tools have to be in place to ensure consistent quality communications and optimized network integration.

After all, the user simply wants to make a quality call, not worry about the technology making the call possible.

Edited by Brooke Neuman