Trends & Metrics

Is convergence certifiable?

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:01:36 -0400

IT managers know all about skills certification. If you want a job, you'd better be able to prove you've got the skills you say you have, and a large industry has grown up around testing for those skills (and cramming for the test). Now, CompTIA, a leading IT industry group, is offering certification in converged networks. The Convergence+ certification covers voice/data networks and joins similar CompTIA programs for security and networking.

For more information about the Convergence+ program:
- read this article from ZDNet

Vonage still top VoIP carrier

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 20:01:35 -0400

The news isn't all bad for Vonage. It's still the leading consumer VoIP service in the U.S., according to figures tracked by ISP-Planet. At year-end 2006, Vonage had 2.2 million subscribers. Comcast Digital Phone had 1.9 million, Time Warner Digital Phone had 1.860 million, Skype (as of July 2005, so this is a very old figure) had 1.8 million paid customers, and Cablevision had 1.2 million customers. Everyone else was far, far behind, though ISP-Planet acknowledges that many service providers don't report their numbers.

For more information about the U.S. consumer VoIP market:
- read this article from ISP Planet

Related Article:
Vonage is still here. Report

Cablecos to chase SMB market

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:01:35 -0400

If you're betting that cablecos are going to be satisfied with signing up home telephony users, you might want to hedge those bets. Insight Research released a report recently predicting that the Top 20 cablecos (are there still that many cable companies left?) are going to turn their attention to SMBs next. Researchers project that telcos will lose more than 1.5 million small business phone lines this year, and nearly 10 million over the next five years. That would probably have happened, cablecos or not. But given that cablecos pass 6.5 million of the 7 million SMBs, count on their being fierce competitors.

For more about the Insight Research report:
- read this Network World article

Related Articles:
Cablecos out-satisfy telcos. Report
Report: Cablecos targeting SMBs. Report
Cablecos emerging as major VoIP players. Report

$15B enterprise wVoIP market predicted

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:01:34 -0400

Does an estimate of $15 billion in enterprise spending on wireless VoIP in five years make sense to you? That's what Juniper Research is predicting--that $2 billion in 2007 sales will grow to $15 billion in 2012, with switches/mobility controllers accounting for $8 billion of that. The big winner is expected to be Cisco, followed by Aruba, Trapeze, Proxim and Meru. For handsets, Juniper says Spectralink (whose sale to Polycom closed this week, by the way) is the company to beat.

For more about the Juniper report:
- read this article from IT Pro

Telco execs know that VoIP is killing their business

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 20:01:34 -0400

This falls into the category of "you mean someone paid money to find this out?" The authoritative Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed 155 telecom executives in 36 countries, and discovered that 68 percent of them think VoIP is the chief threat to fixed line revenues. (Gee, y'think?) More than 80 percent believe that voice calls won't even be a major revenue source with 6 years; 60 percent think it will happen within 4 years. To fight it, 75 percent of telco execs think they need to find new services to preserve revenues, and that price cuts and marketing won't do the trick. Oracle put up the money for the study.

For more information about how telcos are dead meat:
- read this article from TMCNet

Related Article:
VoIP drives telco prices down. Report

1 trillion minutes of VoIP in 2006

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:01:38 -0500

There are tons of stats this week from the research house iLocus. On the carrier side, iLocus counted $2.2 billion in softswitch and media gateway sales last year, up 24 percent from 2005. There were 36.9 million Class 5 softswitch licenses, 34.8 Class 4 softswitch licenses, and 48.2 million service provider media gateway ports sold worldwide. Nortel leads the Class 5 market, followed by Siemens; Huawei leads the Class 4 business. Acme Packet leads the SBC market; Radisys leads the IP media gateway business. Overall, 1.079 trillion minutes of VoIP traffic were served last year--382.3 billion local, 614.4 billion national long distance, and 82.6 billion international LD. The report has lots more detail; it's worth checking out if you're a figures geek.

For more information about the iLocus 2006 VoIP stats:
- read this report from WebWire

TI's ubiquity said to drive SMB market

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:01:36 -0500

TI's making a big deal about how its DSPs are everywhere in the VoIP chain, and how that will supposedly make VoIP rollouts to SMBs easier. To my mind, if an SMB has to think about a DSP, the sale is lost already. But it's true: TI's chips are everywhere. But why should a consumer care?

For more information about TI and its DSPs:
- read this from Telecommunications

Related Articles:
TI puts PIQUA in carrier products. Report
HelloSoft ships VoIP stack for TI wVoIP chip. Report

VoIP competition drives African telecom prices down

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:01:35 -0500

You want to know how competition works, even if it's not legal? In 2005, one report found, nearly all African telcos were charging more than $1/minute for international calls. By last year, only 19 of them were, and about half were charging around 25 cents per minute. VoIP isn't legal in a lot of those countries, so the telcos are reacting not to licensed competition but to real competition. And it's worth noting that the real VoIP cost is far less than 25 cents per minute, which indicates that there's a huge "risk premium" built into the rate--a premium that will largely go away when operators don't have to worry about being carted off to jail.

For more about how VoIP is driving down the cost of African telephony:
- read this article from Tectonic

Related Article:
VoIP in Africa shows market forces in action. Report

China to pump out 35M VoIP phones this year

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 19:01:37 -0500

However many billions of dollars in VoIP phones there will be in 2012, it looks like a lot of them will be coming from China. Another industry tracker, Research and Markets, projects that the combined output of the IP phone manufacturers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan will hit just shy of 35 million units this year, up 31 percent from last year. The report surveyed 50 of the 600 builders in the Greater China market. Skype phones will be popular, as will USB/standalone phones. Wireless phones? Not too many for a few years yet; they're too expensive to develop and build. But, as with any electronic product, expect prices to drop.

For more about the Chinese wave of VoIP phones:
- read this report from ResearchandMarkets

Related Articles:
There's a lot of IP in China. Report
Can 70M Chinese be wrong? Report

Finding VoIP winners

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 19:01:37 -0500

So if the VoIP service providers are lousy investments, who are the winners? A new study from In-Stat may have some clues. With an increase of 3.8 million households in 2006 (and note: that's an increase, not the base number), In-Stat says bandwidth wholesalers--carriers' carriers--are best positioned to take advantage of traffic growth. Consumer adoption will grow more than triple the VoIP market by 2010, the report says. And although international VoIP is still a big part of the market, revenue growth from wholesale VoIP termination and origination is starting to slow.

For more about the In-Stat study:
- read this press release from In-Stat

Telephia measures residential lines

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 19:01:36 -0500

Research firm Telephia is using its patented signal polling technology to track residential access line share in metro areas. Initially the company will track measurements in 10 markets but plans to expand that to 75 markets by year-end.

So far the measurements are telling. For example, the company found that in December, 30 percent of new access lines in Boston went to cable MSOs. Meanwhile, two percent went to VoIP providers.

For more stats:
- check out this release

T-Mobile CEO says wVoIP won't catch on

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:01:38 -0500

The boss at T-Mobile says he doesn't think wireless VoIP is going to be as big a hit as computer-based VoIP. Hamid Akhavan, CEO of T-Mobile International, told a reporter at the 3GSM World Congress that mobile VoIP has a bunch of issues to overcome, among them the resolution of IP addresses, emergency service and pricing. The good news (for him): he doesn't think that mobile VoIP is going to hit his bottom line very hard. Between what he anticipates will be a low pick-up rate and the money he'll make from selling data plans, he might be right. Remember, Skype promised a year ago that they'd have a mobile client, but confessed recently that development was proving much more difficult than expected.

For more information about T-Mobile and mobile VoIP:
- read this article from Infoworld

Are VCs shortchanging VoIP on marketing smarts?

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 19:01:34 -0500

Do venture capitalists know anything about VoIP? Maybe. But one clued-in PR guy/blogger suggests that the real problem is that VC's don't know much about marketing. Andy Abramson, who has seen more than his share of VoIP companies, says that "[m]ost venture-backed voice related companies are led by people how don't have a clue what it really costs to market a product or service to consumers. They have great ideas, but no experience." His point is good, but it's not like VC-backed VoIP companies are unique. Does anyone use anything other than Quicken or Quickbooks? What makes Intuit a great company is that it was founded by an ex-Procter and Gamble brand manager who instilled a customer-facing marketing ethos. VoIP technology is great. Andy's right: we still haven't seen the great marketing-driven success that the technology promises. That's not so much a failure of venture funds as it is a failure of leadership and concept.

For more information about mass marketing of VoIP:
- read this blog entry from VoIP Watch

Skype cleared in Streamcast anti-trust suit

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 19:01:36 -0500

Skype is now clear of a $4.1 billion antitrust lawsuit over the rights to some of the carrier's underlying technology. Streamcast, a distributor of the Morpheus peer-to-peer file sharing software, had claimed that it had had the rights of first refusal to buy the FastTrack technology at the root of Kazaa. Kazaa's founders sold it to someone else, so Streamcast sued pretty much anyone it could think of. Skype, Streamcast said, uses FastTrack. Whether it does or not, a U.S. district judge has tossed the suit, saying Streamcast didn't make its case.

For more information about the Streamcast dismissal:
- read this article from TMCNet and
- read this article from FierceVoIP

Related Articles:
VoIP industry faced with legal fight? Report
Forget about mobile Skype. Report

VOIP.com samples its service

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 19:01:35 -0500

When you're trying to build a business, sometimes sampling is a good strategy. That's what VOIP.com is trying with its "Make A Call" promotion. Visitors to the service provider's website can enter their own phone number and the number they want to call, and be connected for 2 cents per minute--and there's a 12-cent credit provided. VOIP.com currently targets the consumer market with three service plans and either month-to-month or yearly payment options.

For more information about VOIP.com's sampling:
- read this press release from VOIP.com

The latest news of the VoIP future

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 19:01:34 -0500

It's metrics and predictions time! In-Stat says the VoIP market gamed 3.8 million households in 2006, with wholesale revenues of $1.1 billion last year increasing to $3.8 billion in 2010. The Yankee Group puts the SMB VoIP market at $200 million last year growing to $1.3 billion in 2009. And the Dell'Oro Group predicts that the PBX market will exceed $7.5 billion in 2011, with most of the growth coming in IP PBXs.

For more information about the VoIP market:
- read this article and report from TMC Net
- check out this VoIP Monitor article

Related Articles:
More predictions from the peanut gallery. Report

Skype dumps per-minute charges for per-call pricing

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:01:38 -0500

Skype is playing with its fee structure in interesting ways that seem to reflect changes in its own cost structure. We wrote last month about the $30/year unlimited calling plan. Now, for everyone else, Skype is moving from a per-minute charge for SkypeOut calls--the ones terminating on the PSTN--to a flat per-call charge. In the U.S., that's 3.9 cents per call, as opposed to about 2.1 cents per minute. For European users, the SkypeOut structure is more complicated: a flat 3.9 euro cent set-up charge for premium subscribers, a base rate of 1.7 euro cents/minute for everyone else. Outside the U.S., Canada and the U.K., there's no unlimited plan. Given the possibility (probability?) of some very very long calls for only 3.9 cents, it would appear that Skype is now being charged for termination on a per-call rather than per-minute basis; otherwise, the red ink would flow like blood in a Peckinpah movie. And if Skype's getting that deal from telcos, won't other VoIP players follow? Any little birds out there willing to confirm or deny?

For more information about Skype's new pricing:
- read this press release from Skype

How do you define "success"?

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:01:36 -0500

Before you sprain your elbow congratulating yourself on how technologically wonderful you are, being in the VoIP business and all, think a minute. Sure, customer uptake is going gangbusters. Sure, there's a new technical breakthrough every couple of months--innovation nearly at the rate of the computer business. But, one analysis asks, how's VoIP doing as a business? Are you creating shareholder value? And for all the new technology in infrastructure, is the actual end-customer's telephone experience any different? It's a similar question to what we ask here a lot in FierceVoIP: once you get past "cheap phone calls," what's the big attraction to VoIP? The sooner you can answer that question, the faster you'll make your shareholders happy. Just ask Vonage.

For more information about VoIP innovation:
- read this article from New Telephony

Junction offers flat-rate PBX hosting

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 19:01:36 -0500

The typical hosted PBX charges on a per-seat basis for unlimited minutes. Junction Networks has a different idea: a flat fee of $50 per month for 10 users, plus PSTN usage. SIP calls are free. There are extra-cost packages for voice mailboxes and auto-attendant and ring and hunt groups--pretty much anything that requires processing, storage, or termination. This pricing model may not be for everyone; remember that one big selling point of the per-seat model is predictability. But Junction puts an interesting twist on the hosted PBX model.

For more information about Junction Networks' offering:
- read this press release from Junction Networks

Is this the year of VoIP consolidation?

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 19:01:35 -0500

Will this be the year of a VoIP rollup? Some in the industry seem to think so. You could certainly tick off on two hands the top consumer VoIP carriers and maybe have some fingers left over. But the business of providing VoIP to SMBs is considerably more fractured; by one count (which seems to me grossly underestimated) there are 200 companies doing it, and they're all extremely localized. Given the heat behind the VoIP industry and the interest exhibited by the market, it would seem like a good bet that someone will raise the money to buy a bunch of companies and establish a strong national presence. Any bets who that might be--or who would bankroll a rollup?

For more information about VoIP consolidation:
- read this article from The Denver Post