A new report has predicted that hosted business VoIP (voice over internet protocol) and the take-up of session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking technology will both exhibit strong worldwide growth over the next five years.
The report, by the international independent analysts Infonetics, forecasts that hosted internet protocol (IP) telephony services of the kind offered by a business VoIP provider or VoIP reseller will be a major contributor towards a predicted aggregate growth of $377 billion in the combined domestic and business VoIP markets between 2012 and 2016.
SIP trunking – a technology which enables traditional business phone systems to receive IP telephony signals – will, the report says, be an equal driver of domestic and business VoIP take-up over the same period.
Principal analyst in business VoIP-related research at Infonetics, Diane Myers, said that the growth in hosted business VoIP and SIP trunking activity had already begun to be witnessed this year as part of IP telephony’s prominent role in meeting the demand for unified communications (UC), whereby different kinds of communications data – including faxes, emails, and video calls – are all received at a single reception point. Myers said:
“The SIP trunking and hosted UC segments were marked by strong growth and dynamic supplier landscapes in the first half of 2012. Beyond traditional operators and service providers, we’re seeing a growing number of PBX/UC vendors, enterprise agents, system integrators, and resellers, expanding into hosted UC offerings”
The report revealed that SIP trunking had shown a 23% revenue growth between January and June this year, when contrasted with total earnings recorded between July and December 2011.
The increased price accessibility of IP telephony among smaller enterprises was meanwhile evidenced by a separate Infonetics survey which found that, for the first time, complexity rather than cost was considered the principal obstacle to adopting UC.
