Twenty percent annual growth for VoIP

The U.S. residential VoIP market is predicted to grow at a compound annual rate of 20 percent over the next four years according to the Telecom Industry Association's 2008 Market Review & Forecast. The study found the U.S. VoIP residential market has trebled over the last two years to 15.9 million connections and predicted there would be 32.3 million subscribers by 2011. Revenues are expected to grow at a similar pace, up 19.2 percent CAGR over the period 2008-2011. Revenue is expected to double over the next four years, reaching $10 billion by 2011.  

The bullish forecasts have once again been put together by Wilkofsky Gruen Associates. The firm has been producing forecasts for the TIA for 12 years. Speaking at the release, Arthur Gruen said telecoms were not immune to the current downturn. But, he said, unlike the 2001 dot com crash, telecoms were not at the heart of this downturn. Gruen said demand was driving investment in contrast to the supply induced crash of early 2000: "We could see a bit of a pause in 2008 reflecting a downturn in the economy, particularly by enterprises who want to hold back or delay some of their investments. Nevertheless, the enterprises are focused on converting to IP, and a lot of the plans are already in place. We don't expect them to delay that."

The report said cable companies were expected to continue dominating VoIP take up, despite having higher prices than the pure-play VoIP companies like Vonage. Cable had 11.6 million subscribers at the end of 2007, 73 percent of the market, up from 6.5 million subscribers, equating to 61 percent of the market in 2006. "We expect the local phone companies to gain market share as they begin bundling VoIP with their new video services in addition to marketing VoIP outside their home territories to bolster their subscriber counts."

For more:
- TIA forecast

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