The draft National Telecom Policy 2011 says the
government will encourage an ecosystem for provision of a significantly large
bouquet of services on IP platform.

Is the Indian government serious about opening up VoIP
services that can assist consumers – both retail and enterprises – to enjoy
cost effective services?

The government has not given any target for achieving its
VoIP goals. The telecom minister has set goals for most of the other services
including manufacturing, broadband, teledensity, etc.

If the government needs to open up the VoIP, the
government needs to be convinced about the benefits of VoIP. Mobile operators
will be depending less on spectrum. It will not affect the revenues of mobile
players in a big way.

VoIP can attract more service providers entering the VoIP
market. However, there are security concerns. If the US is thriving on VoIP
services, why cannot India? Hope the draft will not be killed during the
implementation stage.

According to Infonetics Research,
VoIP services are expected to touch $76 billion by 2015, driven by SIP trunking
and hosted business VoIP.

Revenue from SIP trunking services to businesses is
forecast by Infonetics to grow at a phenomenal 52 percent CAGR from 2011 to
2015.

The number of seats for hosted business VoIP and unified
communications services is on track to more than double between 2011 and 2015.

Due to continued demand for cloud-based services, IP
Centrex and hosted unified communication service revenue grew 22 percent and
seats grew 25 percent in the first half of 2011 compared to the second half of
2010.

The number of residential and small office/home office
(SOHO) subscribers to hosted VoIP services is expected to grow from 179 million
in 2011 to 262 million worldwide by 2015.

BT, TDC, Vodafone are among the top hosted business VoIP
services leaders in EMEA.

 

In all parts of EMEA, including Africa and the Middle
East, we continue to see strong deployments of IP Centrex services. Mobility
continues to be a critical capability as businesses look towards flexibility
and integration of services into a single mobile device. Those providers that
are focused on FMC (fixed-mobile convergence) capabilities are true
stand-outs,” said Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics
Research.

Indian regulators have been sitting on VoIP files for a
long. It is time for opening up the VoIP services. Let consumers and mobile
operators benefit.

By Baburajan K
[email protected]