Another VoIP Milestone: Over 1,000 Billion VoIP Minutes Used In 2006

The 8th annual report on VoIP industry published by iLocus identifies size and market leaders in over 50 market segments/sub-segments within the VoIP services and equipment markets.

In terms of VoIP minutes, estimated 1,079 billion minutes of VoIP traffic was carried by service providers worldwide in 2006. Of these minutes, 382.3 billion were local call volume, 614.4 billion were national long distance (NLD) call volume, and 82.6 billion were international long distance (ILD) call volume.

iLocus has been following the VoIP minutes data since March 1999. It is the only research group that has been able to consistently track such data and attribute the share of these minutes to service providers and vendors. In particular, iLocus pioneered the concept of attributing market share in traffic/minutes to equipment providers back in 1999.

David Quirk, CEO of C21 said: We at C21 Communications appreciate the annual report on VoIP industry, because it enables us to track particular market trends." C21 Communications is a Next Generation Network (NGN) solution provider and exclusive distributor of Topex products (Softswitches, media gateways and fixed mobile convergence equipment) in the UK.

In the carrier VoIP equipment market, softswitches and media gateways generated combined revenues of $2.2 billion, which represents about 24 percent growth over the previous year 2005. During the calendar year 2006, 36.9 million Class 5 softswitch licenses, 34.8 million Class 4 softswitch licenses, and 48.2 million service provider media gateway ports were sold in the market worldwide

In the area of Class 5 softswitch if the contribution from independent application server makers is included, then the actual Next Generation Network subscriber line licenses sold during 2006 comes up to 40.9 million. Out of the 40.9 million lines, an estimated 14.8 million lines were deployed for hosted VoBB application. The 14.8 million figure further splits into 3.4 million lines of hosted business Centrex/PBX and 11.4 million residential VoBB lines.

In the enterprise segment, the annual report reveals that in 2006 vendors shipped a total of about 18.3 million IP PBX end user licenses, and an estimated 8.5 million desktop IP phones. Desktop IP phone sales grew 38 percent over the previous year 2005, while the IPPBX market grew an impressive 52 percent year over year.

The VoIP industry report further reveals that that there were estimated 37.5 million VoBB subscribers worldwide as of end 2006. 16.5 million new VoBB subscribers were added during 2006. US added almost 3 million new VoBB subscribers during 2006. France and Germany added about 2.15 million and 1.16 million new VoBB subscribers respectively during 2006. Other markets which were aggressive in expanding VoBB subscriber base in 2006 include Netherlands, Canada, and Italy.

The research also showed that desktop IP phone sales increased by 38 per cent and the internet protocol private branch exchange (IPPBX) market grew by 52 per cent.