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Just a day after a forecast that voice
services over broadband won't be a major market in Europe, analysts are saying voice may well end up the biggest value-added
opportunity for broadband service providers.
The argument
goes that as broadband - via cable or more commonly DSL - reaches a
certain point, it becomes attractive for companies to enter the market for
services that use Internet Protocol based on gaming, video consumption,
music and voice.
A note from Juniper Research today said: "Although much attention
has been paid to the more complex and 'sexy' value-added services like
video-on-demand and online games, it appears that the biggest opportunity
will be in voice services as broadband-IP voice takes over from
traditional circuit-switched voice."
BT and other incumbents around the world
have even been jumping on board the VoIP bandwagon of late, exploiting
their broadband leadership and not wanting to just wait and see others come in and undercut
them.
In the residential market, Juniper reckons
online gaming that relies on broadband will rise from being worth $2.9bn
globally in 2009, up from $600m in 2004. Music will grow to $2.12bn from
$410m, video services to $5.71bn from $800m and voice over IP (VoIP) to
$27.1bn from $4.29bn.
Business use will see online data storage
move to $2.92bn from $310m in 2004 in 2009, Web hosting to $5.28bn from
$2.67bn, virtual private network provision to $2.36bn from $550m and VoIP
to $20.09bn from $4.54bn.
That puts the combined VoIP market at
$47.19bn, compared to an estimate by consultancy Analysys this week of
just €1.3bn in Europe by 2007. | 