SPOTLIGHT: VoIP Industry Defies Investors, MVNOs Drive Mobile VoIP, Developers Drive Open

In a trifecta of reports released this week, iLocus [1] sees boom times for VoIP in spite of investor cold-feet, MVNOs driving Mobile VoIP, and developers pushing open source solutions over more hip Voice 2.0 mash-up solutions.

There's been a 67 percent increase in VoIP access service licenses and a 35 percent increase in VoIP traffic over last year. Carriers seem to have no choice, and must build out IP infrastructure or risk becoming irrelevant. Losses in landlines are pushing wireline operators to expand mobile operations while mobile operators want to leverage fixed broadband networks for voice offload (i.e. femtocells) or "over the top" services.

SIP trunking is getting kudos for enabling other services, including Voice 2.0 services hosted in the core and peer-to-peer VoIP in enterprise. Europe is outpacing the rest of the world in VoIP penetration, while in the U.S. cable companies lead the way – for now. Broadband offerings from AT&T and Verizon could end up shifting the balance back to the telcos in the long run.

All this VoIP technology is enabling MVNOs to offer Mobile VOIP solutions, with over two-thirds expecting to have a mobile VoIP offering in place by 2010. Current estimates peg 450,000 paying mobile VoIP subscribers worldwide with a forecast of that number to grow to 2.4 million by the end of 2008.

Voice 2.0 developers like SIP over all the other web service APIs, according to iLocus, and 72 percent of them prefer to work with open source telephony platforms like Asterisk and offer services directly to the consumer. Working with directly with telcos is the second most favored option, rather than going to vendors like Microsoft or Sylantro.

For more:
- iLocus blogs on VoIP industry investment [2], MVNO and Mobile VOIP [3], and Voice 2.0 growth [4]

Related articles:
Twenty percent annual growth for VoIP [5]
VoIP Named to 2008 "Hot Jobs" List [6]
VoIP expected to be good despite global downturn [7]