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CEO Offers VoIP Predictions
By CINDY WAXER
TMCnet Contributing Editor
'Tis the season' for industry pundits to begin peering into their crystal balls and reporting their VoIP trend predictions for the coming year. Rupert Galliers-Pratt, chairman and chief executive of Vistula Communications, is certainly no exception. While VoIP technology was one of the biggest telecom stories of 2005, Galliers-Pratt maintains that the following trends and predictions could grab headlines in 2006:
1. Competitive Practices: The onset of VoIP "walled gardens" by Internet Access Providers, who may start to block VoIP calls from major VoIP providers and only open channels for their own services in an attempt to regain and build revenues from voice services.
2. Consolidation/Partnerships: Major Internet players such as Yahoo! and Google, will continue to develop strategic partnerships, merge with or acquire Internet Access Providers to secure access and enhance services with their VoIP offering.
3. Wireless: Wireless will continue to grow and the pending 3G roll-out will be the catalyst for Mobile Operators to embrace VoIP services, as the most effective technology to bring mobility and increased connectivity between businesses mobile and fixed PBX extensions.
4. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP): SIP will likely become the standard delivery mechanism for VoIP calls, threatening the position of traditional PBX manufacturers, as SIP enables Internet Access Providers a standard upon which to offer even more cost effective, hosted, and feature-rich services.
5. Video/Multimedia: VoIP, which is capable of being more than simply telephone technology, may become effectively capable of providing an even greater set of feature-rich multimedia services that provide audio, full-motion video and other multimedia communications services such as video conferencing.
Research firm Gartner released its own predictions for 2006 including that cell phones and VoIP will be the only telephony in use for 30 percent of US homes by 2010.
"It only took more than 125 years but POTS (plain old telephony service) is now on the decline in the U.S.," said Ken Dulaney, vice president and analyst at Gartner in a statement. "The emergence of VoIP and the phenomenal rise of the mobile phone now represent the 'dial tone' for the future."
For a few more predictions, read TMCnet President Rich Tehrani's VoIP Blog, tehrani.com, for some predictions on the future of VoIP. Also, want a complete overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Be sure to check out INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, EAST, which runs January 24-27, 2006. See you in
Fort Lauderdale, Fla. !
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Cindy Waxer is a Toronto-based freelance journalist specializing in business and technology. She has written for publications including TIME, Fortune Small Business, Business 2.0, Computerworld, Canadian Business, and Workforce Management. To see more of her articles, please visit Cindy Waxer’s columnist page.
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