Carriers' Investments In VoIP Gear Set To SurgeCarriers' Investments In VoIP Gear Set To Surge

LONDON — Service providers invested $1.73 billion in next generation voice equipment worldwide in 2004,including for VoIP deployments, according to just published figures from market research group Infonetics.

The company suggests the investments will expand over the next few years as carriers migrate their circuit-switched voice networks to packet networks, to reach $5.8 billion by 2008.

Infonetics says in its annual look at carriers' investments into voice services that 2004 was a 'break-through year' for VoIP adoption, especially in North America, and that this year is shaping up for more of the same. "Building upon the momentum established in 2004, service providers around the world invested in next gen voice in record numbers in their quest for new services that would differentiate them from the competition and bring in revenue," said Kevin Mitchell, Infonetics Research analyst and lead author of the study.

Mitchell says carriers in North America and Asia continue to lead the the modernization path, "and Western Europe is awakening."

Infonetics suggests that despite the momentum, complete migration from legacy to next generation gear will take some time for access networks and local and tandem switching, as most of the study's respondents say it will take them at least 5 years or currently have no definite timeframe for that switchover.

Other findings indicate that just under a third of the [44] carriers interviewed plan to use the 3GPP IP Multimedia System (IMS) reference architecture in 2006, and that VoIP is likely to see huge growth, with an average of half of respondent central offices (COs) deploying next generation voice gear by 2006.