67% Growth in VoIP Server Licenses

Whatever instability may be coming in some parts of the U.S. VoIP market, global growth--especially in Europe--is robust. The most recent analysis by iLocus shows 67 percent annual growth in VoIP server licenses sold globally, with traffic up 35 percent.

For the second consecutive year, Europe outpaced rest of the world in VoIP penetration. All major European operators--whether wireline or wireless--have a VoIP offering in place and have announced that they will be deploying IMS platforms.

The difference between deployments in the U.S. and European markets is the attitude and actions of incumbents. In the U.S. market, incumbents have not yet decided to make a major effort to sell VoIP; in Europe that already has happened. Because of carrier reluctance, challengers, especially the cable companies, have made significant market share gains.

What happened in Europe will happen in the U.S. market, however. At some point, AT&T and Verizon will decide to push VoIP aggressively, and the dynamics of the market will shift as much as they have in the fdial-up and broadband access markets, which initially were dominated by independent providers.

But fixed line replacement isn't the only place to watch for change. VoIP as a mobility and Web or enterprise application is early in its development right now. Though it might seem inconceivable, revenues from those sorts of applications will one day be significant. If that is not apparent it is simply because applications and business models in the mobility and Web and software spaces are seminal. Even Skype, as popular as it is, only represents two percent or so of global long-distance traffic, for example. So it will take some time before anybody notices.

Still, note that nearly 25 percent of mobile virtual network operators--wireless providers that do not own their own networks--already offering or testing mobile VoIP. By 2010 more than two thirds say they will have a mobile VoIP offering in place.