A new study by independent market analysis provide Reportlinker has identified considerable ongoing growth in the take-up of internet protocol (IP) telephony in the US.
According to the report – entitle ‘North American VoIP Access and SIP Trunking Services Market’ – this growth has been buoyed by both the need to replace ageing business phone systems and by an increasing realisation among potential business customers of the benefits of IP telephony.
The report says that the benefits cited by these enterprise customers revolve around the greater manageability and flexibility inherent in business VoIP systems, together with the latter’s reduced phone costs.
Increased take-up has also been helped, it says, by businesses becoming more at ease with the technological aspects of IP telephony.
The report forecasts that overall revenue generated by the US IP telephony services sector will continue to grow at least up to and including 2017.
As indicated in its title, the study points to a particularly strong demand in the US both for business VoIP (voice over internet telephony) services and for the provision of session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking installations – whereby conventional business phone systems can be adapted to both send and receive communications via IP telephony.
This demand, it says, has been strong both in the small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector, as well as in evidence in a growing number of larger businesses.
In addition to premises-based IP telephony installations, the study points to a growing take-up of IP telephony services supplied via external sources, such as those offered by a business VoIP provider or VoIP reseller.
Finally, the report says that IP telephony adoption will be given further impetus through what it claims are the natural links between IP telephony and web-enabled unified communications (UC) – the increasingly sought-after facility whereby transmissions via different media are accessed at common, convenient reception points.
