VoIP Equipment Sales on The Rise as ... - Westron Communications

by Best in UC on 22/05/12 at 3:23 pm

Voice over IP deployments are increasingly becoming the rule, rather than the exception.

That?s the trend that seems to be indicated by Infonetics Research, which tracks spending by telephone service providers on VoIP and IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) equipment.

?In the first quarter of 2012, we saw the largest order of IMS core equipment and application server licenses on record, secured by Alcatel-Lucent, ?said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics. This is ?a clear sign that operators in North America are gearing up for voice over LTE (VoLTE) deployments.

?While commercial VoLTE services have yet to launch, this is a taste of what is to come as operators push forward over the next 5-plus years. That said, large equipment orders will be sporadic. And the IMS market will continue to be lumpy,? Myers added.

Thanks to exceptionally strong IMS equipment spending, the overall service provider VoIP equipment market bucked its traditional down first quarter by inching up to $715 million, 1 percent over the fourth quarter of 2011.

Globally, the overall market is up 18 percent in the first quarter, when compared to the first quarter of 2011. This is despite continued declines in legacy trunk media gateway and softswitch sales. Instead, sales are higher for IMS core equipment, session border controller (SBC), and voice application server equipment.

The first quarter of 2012 ?was an unusually good quarter for the service provider VoIP and IMS equipment market not only because of the big IMS order for VoLTE, but also because of continued fixed-line network transformation, fixed-mobile convergence, and voice over broadband (VoBB) projects over IMS worldwide,? Myers said.

Similar findings were released by research firm Exact Ventures, which found that the IMS core market in the first quarter nearly tripled year-over-year, in major part due to significant VoLTE deployments in North America.

?While the IMS Core market showed very strong growth during the quarter, it is still a relatively small market, accounting for just 10 percent of the total?wireline plus wireless?voice core market,? said Greg Collins, founder and principal analyst at Exact Ventures. ?The transition away from circuit switching to an all IP core network based on IMS is just beginning and is expected to last well over a decade.?

In the first quarter, Alcatel-Lucent more than doubled its service provider VoIP and IMS revenue and market share, propelling the company to the leading position for worldwide market share, ahead of perennial leaders Huawei and GENBAND.

North America led the quarter, with carrier VoIP and IMS spending up 18 percent quarter-over-quarter, as well as 76 percent year-over-year.

Infonetics expects the number of mobile and fixed-line subscribers on IMS networks to grow 42 percent in 2012 to top 250 million worldwide.

deplorable mls draft khloe kardashian mark davis marine urination video hostess cadillac ats