VoIP: Residential Strong, Biz Growing

According to Infonetics Research, revenue from residential and SOHO VoIP subscribers still eclipses that from businesses, but the business segment is growing about twice as fast, largely because of the popularity of SIP trunking and hosted VoIP and unified communications (UC) services. Both residential and business segments are expected to show strong global growth over the next five years.

• Global service provider revenue from business and residential/SOHO VoIP services totaled nearly $58 billion in 2011, up 16% from the previous year.



• The number of seats for hosted business VoIP and unified communications services is on track to more than double between 2012 and 2016.



• SIP trunking service revenue jumped 128% in 2011 from the previous year.



• Demand for cloud-based services helped push hosted PBX and UC service revenue up 33% and seats up 44% in 2011.



• The number of residential and SOHO VoIP subscribers grew 14% in 2011, to more than 178 million worldwide.



• Businesses continue to migrate to VoIP on their premises, but T-1 lines are still the most commonly used trunking service today, which is expected to continue into 2014.



• SIP trunking is growing: Of the North American enterprises participating in Infonetics' survey, a third use SIP trunks today, and 42% plan to by 2014.