By: Federico Descalzo

The rise of VoIP

First introduced around a decade ago, the uptake of VoIP has been relatively slow in comparison to some other telecom trends. In fact, according to experts, despite being around for ten years or so, VoIP is only just moving from the early adoption stage to gain a more mainstream status.  Market research firm In-Stat estimated that, by the end of 2013, there were 288 million VoIP users, a number which shrinks when compared to the 6.5 billion fixed and mobile phone lines in use.

All of this is set to change though. Over the coming years, the use of VoIP is expected to explode with Juniper Research estimating that by 2017 the number of VoIP users will have jumped to one billion. Furthermore, according to Infonetics Research, the number of phones connected to a VoIP system, or other unified communications services, is set to double in number by 2016, while the combined business and residential VoIP services will grow to be worth $74.5 billion in 2015.

While the advantages of VoIP are clear in developing countries, where the terrestrial infrastructure is not as good and the technology is already popular, the forecasted rise of VoIP is expected to happen on a global level – so is the hype justified? The short answer is yes, but the longer answer is far more complex than that. 

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First and foremost in the advantages VoIP brings is its cost-saving potential. After the initial expense of deployment, VoIP reduces the cost for equipment, lines, manpower and maintenance resulting in significant net savings from managing only one network and not needing to sustain a legacy telephony system in an increasingly digital and data-centered world.  For the end user, the result is cheaper phone bills, especially when making international calls.  Moving away from cost, VoIP also enables rich media services, service mobility and phone portability, as well as removing geographical boundaries. So far, so good – but there are drawbacks; the main one being reliability. As VoIP uses Internet, the quality of a call would be susceptible to the same problems commonly associated with home broadband, including latency, jitter and packet loss. These same issues also apply to delivery of HD videos, video communication and video conferencing applications, which, in addition to voice, are also being migrated on to IP, constituting a further opportunity and technology challenge at the same time.

Network impact

Despite its imperfections, VoIP is inarguably on the up and its rapid increase will not only transform how global business is carried out and the way developing countries use technology, but also operators’ networks. Present IP network infrastructures are not flexible enough to cope with all of the different behaviors VoIP is expected to trigger, both in terms of resource allocation and network path optimization.  As a result, networks are becoming strained, affecting the quality of service and limiting what new services operators can offer. Over The Top (OTT) content providers are already showing how important it is to provide alternative services over IP. If telcos are to stay ahead in the future, then, it is clear they must leverage their legacy architectures into next generation networks, capable of offering the services and applications associated with VoIP and capable of dealing with the huge increase in traffic and data bandwidth they bring.