Voice Business "Rapidly Collapsing?"

Whether a service provider executive is convinced the voice business is growing, shrinking or collapsing sort of depends on which segment of the business that executive is in. Many places in the world, voice revenue still is a growth business. In other places, voice revenues are flat, or slowly declining. 

In some regions, such as Europe, the problems are viewed as acute. Some would even say the voice business is “rapidly collapsing”, with fixed revenues nearly halving between 2010 and 2012.

Mobile service providers have the same long term problems as fixed network service providers, again with the distinction that some regions face more immediate problems than others. 

To a greater extent, service providers are changing the retail packaging of voice so that it almost becomes a feature of use of the network, rather than a discrete revenue-generating service. That's the whole idea behind the way Verizon Wireless packages use of voice and texting apps. 

Users get access to the network for an initial fee that also includes unlimited domestic voice and texting, with the amount of data bandwidth becoming the variable part of the package. 

Telefonica O2 Germany  offers free voice and messaging on all of its four mobile data tariffs. Buckets of usage range from €19.99 for basic service at 3.6 Mbps, with a 1 Gbyte bucket of usage, up to €50 for 50 Mbps service and a bucket of usage of 5 GBytes.

STL Partners tends to concur that voice is quite challenges in the European market. 

European Core Mobile Services Revenue