News
BICS expects voice over IP to account for 15% of international wholesale voice revenue this year
Voice over IP (VoIP) revenues are predicted to jump by 40% this year to reach $2.1 billion, according to a recently published report.
In 2017, VoIP will account for 15% of total international wholesale voice revenue, an increase from 12% in 2016.
The report, published by wholesale operator BICS, used data from across the industry to identify and analyse trends and drivers in the telecoms sector.
Despite the increased demand for VoIP services, the total volume of international voice traffic is still expected to fall for the first time in 2017, as the market drops below the 423 billion minutes logged in 2016. Despite this declining trend, the volume of VoIP traffic is expected to grow by as much as 22% in 2017, to account for 61 billion minutes.
"Traditional business models are no longer working and without adapting to change and adopting fresh approaches, telecoms’ old guard will not succeed in the face of new competition," said BICS CEO Daniel Kurgan, in a statement.
Businesses are increasingly turning to virtual public branch exchanges, which leverage cloud based technology to manage their incoming and outgoing calls.
"This has created an important revenue source for wholesale carriers, which can now deliver full cloud based communications services to the enterprise market," the report stated.
While demand for traditional voice call services continues to wane across the sector, carriers are under pressure to make sure that new, cloud-centric services can offset that decline.
