Operators’ revenue from voice services will fall from $380 billion in 2019 to $210 billion in 2024 due to increasing usage of OTT (Over-the-Top) apps, including WhatsApp and Viber, according to Juniper Research.

The number of VoLTE (Voice over LTE) users will approach 5 billion by 2024 from 2 billion in 2019.

Smart speakers and VoLTE will work together to enable IP-based voice services. Over 220 million smart speakers will be used to make calls to landlines or mobile phone numbers by 2024.

CPaaS (Communications-Platform-as-a-Service) is key to the distribution of emerging voice services. Developing voice technologies, such as IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and voice bots, will be essential components of successful CPaaS platforms by offering additional communication channels.

Operators should sign partnerships with CPaaS vendors to allow access to their mobile subscribers for voice and messaging services as a strategy to mitigate declining revenue.

Smart speakers, such as Amazon Echo and Google Nest, will enable new engagement channels which operators can offer to brands and enterprises.

The research forecasts that the number of smart speaker voice minutes to phone numbers will grow over 1,000 percent over the next 5 years to represent 230 billion minutes of voice use globally by 2024.

VoLTE networks will be increasingly leveraged to direct mobile calls to smart speakers. Mobile operators should support these emerging services by using mobile phone numbers as unique identifiers to enable calls to be directed to the correct smart speaker user. Users will link incoming traffic to both their smartphone and smart speakers simultaneously, the report said.