VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), or IP telephony, has become a widespread means of communication today. While earlier this was the choice of only a select few, people are now increasingly adopting VoIP solutions. The number of players in this field has gone up substantially and will continue to increase. The heavy competition prevalent in the IP telephony market has driven service providers to slash their prices and offer a wide range of features.
IP telephony uses packet-switching protocol to transmit voice signals over broadband lines instead of the conventional circuit-switching network. Analysts have predicted that when unified messaging services that include voice mail, email, faxes, and pages are coupled with IP telephones, it will propel the market to incredible heights.
Analysts have further predicted that by 2009, there will be over 155 million business IP endpoints in operation, and over 37% of these will be wireless. By 2009, 73% of customers the world over will be using a wireless handset. The wireless IP end points hold the key to sway the customers to their side.
The global VoIP market is expected to reach $3.3 billion by 2010. It is increasingly becoming an indispensable tool for businessmen because it provides cost savings, excellent coverage of voice and data, and better communication. In a recent study, the VoIP market was divided into three groups, namely VoIP over VPN, VoIP real-time QoS bandwidth, and hosted VoIP.
Multi-national companies use VoIP over VPN (Virtual Private Network) to eliminate long distance toll charges for communication between different sites. Healthcare (telemedicine) and broadcasting enterprises use VoIP real-time QoS bandwidth to provide real time audio and video data transfer. Hosted VoIP enables enterprises to save on upgrades and capital expenditure.
The growth of VoIP shows immense potential to influence the telecommunications market and bring about a radical change.
