The TIMES of INDIA MARCH 27, 2004  IP telephony gaining momentum
IP telephony gaining momentum
SATYAPRAKASH SINGH

TIMES NEWS NETWORK
[ SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 2004 06:22:18 PM ]

BANGALORE: Despite being confined to closed user groups (CUGs), IP telephony is gaining rapid momentum in India and is expected to cross 1 lakh units mark this year. The industry forecasts a 250 per cent year-on-year sales growth in IP phones.

V Pradeep, MD of ABS India, formerly Alcatel Business Group, says most corporates are now embracing IP environment for their new telephone deployments. In most cases, the upgradation is from analogue to IP phones as India has a small base of digital phones.

He said once the Indian government allows the interconnection between IP phones and PSTN and mobile phones, the growth would be phenomenal. "TRAI is working on the modalities for interconnection. Globally also, this regulation is going away in most countries," he added. IP telephony penetration is estimated at over 10 per cent globally.

Karthik Natarajan, MD of Snom, an IP phone vendor, says, "Besides big enterprises, there are signs now of medium-sized companies going for IP phones because of benefits such as scalability, ease of use, stability and improved productivity."

Some reports suggest that IP telephony a $10 million market in 2002, estimated to be $39 million in 2003, will grow up to $270 million by 2008. The vendors like Cisco, Nortel, D-Link and Snom are active in the Indian IP phone market. The market here is dominated by SIP (session initiation protocol)-based phones, while the IP telephony providers like Sify, Net4India and VSNL are sinking big bucks in building SIP platforms.

Some observers have dubbed SIP as the protocol of the future for VoIP, saying it is more Web-centric and can support a wide range of voice and communications programmes than other IP telephony protocols such as H.323 and media gateway control protocol (MGCP).