VoIP consolidation to continue rapidly with Competition
Competition for a share in the market expected to generate £13.5 billion in global revenue by 2010 would be fierce. Reports also said that the migration from fixed-line to mobile and VoIP services will increase exponentially in coming years, resulting in heavy consolidation in the sector through 2008 and signaling the death knell of traditional telephony.
Sarika Patel, head of technology at Grant Thornton, cited the doubling of the VoIP customer subscriber base in 2006 and its fourfold growth in the last two years as one of the reasons to believe that the VoIP worldwide customer base will top 250 million in two years.
Quoted from itpronews “VoIP is no longer next generation telephony, it is here now and 2008 should see strategic acquisitions of independent software developers and ISPs [independent service providers] by large telcos looking to consolidate their VoIP offerings,” she said.
She added that VoIP had disrupted the traditional value chain in the communications industry with the focus now falling on internet protocol (IP) as opposed to traditional voice calls. “As such, there is a bitter turf war taking place in the fragmented market of service provision, particularly for customer ownership,” Patel said.