A new report by UK broadband information organisation, Point Topic, has produced findings which will come as no surprise to those already familiar with the rapid adoption of business VoIP; that worldwide take up of VoIP services in general rose by 12.6% in 2010, and is also predicted to continue to increase substantially over the next five years.
The Point Topic report points to the main driving force behind the huge upsurge in VoIP adoption as the considerable cost savings enjoyed over traditional telephone company landline call connections.
Reduced phone costs are also one of the main reasons for the continued increase in the number of companies subscribing to business VoIP provider services; or which have adapted their existing private exchanges for VoIP signal carriage by using session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking.
According to the report, VoIP (voice over internet protocol) is currently generating worldwide revenues totalling $17.3 billion. This figure, predicts the report, is likely to continue to grow each year by $40 billion up to and including 2015.
The Point Topic report’s authors also offers a reminder regarding the strong link between high speed broadband internet penetration and the take-up of VoIP; namely that those with access to reliable high speed broadband connections are able to exploit the technologies of VoIP and internet protocol (IP) telephony in general (the corollary being that those without are in danger of being left behind).
According to Point Topic’s senior analyst, John Boswell, there will be more than three quarters of a billion fixed line high speed broadband users across the globe by December 2015. ‘In theory’, says Boswell, ‘all of them are targets for VoIP’.
The report’s identification of the rapid expansion of both broadband and VoIP is likely to add impetus to the current campaigns of many community and business leaders for urgent investment in broadband infrastructure in rural areas.
