Convergence Bulletin

Below you can read comment from the illume team, and find out where we are speaking and see some of the comment that has been published recently in newspapers.

A mixed Quarter for Hosted VoIP

This quarter has been interesting as we have seen a real difference between players; some players have shown significant growth while others have seen little growth and a few have actually gone backwards in terms of numbers. Providers have mentioned that although they are putting significant numbers of new users on to their bases they are seeing churn of customers also. The churn seems to be a reflection on the economy with some customers going out of business and cutting the number of users on their systems.

This has lead to an overall Quarter on Quarter growth of only 7%, although most of the providers are talking about having strong funnels of new business.

Download a pdf of the illume VoIP research >>

SIP Trunking going from Strength to Strength

SIP trunking has been as a strong area of growth for all providers surveyed. We have seen providers who have always had small number of SIP trunking connections reporting strong growth. We are also seeing a number of new companies offering services including BT wholesale.

The IP trunks figure as measured at the end of March was: 136,364

This represented a quarter on quarter growth of 38%, although still insignificant compared with ISDN base, this market appears set for continued hyper growth in coming months. This figure is slightly behind where illume predicted the market would be in its SIP Trunking report, this has mainly been due to a few predicted launches being delayed a couple of months.

IP Trunking

This quarter we have started publishing a quarterly view of the IP trunking market, initially we were looking at this in terms of "SIP" trunks but during our discussion with providers it is clear there is some debate about which services are using SIP versus IAX, H323 etc. Therefore the figures we are publishing should probably be best seen as IP trunks rather than specifically SIP trunks, though in fact the majority of this number is likely to be SIP. We define a trunk as "the technical capability to support a single voice call, regardless of codec".

The IP trunks figure as measured at the end of Augusts was: 70,040

We are seeing strong growth in the SIP trunking market with a number of new entrant providers. These providers are often focussing on an ISDN replacement proposition which seems to be gaining traction.

Presence - Where are you now?

Depending on who you ask, 'Presence' is either the ' The Fact or Condition of Being Present' or the the seventh studio album by Led Zeppelin.

A more useful definition in our industry is 'A Status Indicator that Conveys Ability and Willingness of a Potential Communication'

The introduction of 'Presence' as part of our new and exciting communications landscape has presented us with a more deterministic method of communicating, i.e. by having a reasonably good idea about the availability of the intended parties. [more of this article]

State of the Nation - June 08

During May, illume travelled the length and breadth of the country to carry out a series of face-to-face interviews with most of the key service providers currently operating in the hosted VoIP marketplace.

The consensus (with very few exceptions) is that the UK’s hosted VoIP market has not met the expectations it set itself a few years back. This is not to suggest that the technology or market is flawed, merely that some of the hurdles to be overcome were bigger and more troublesome that originally anticipated.

We also noted (and again this confirmed that the technology chosen was a largely irrelevant), that all the vendors experienced virtually identical issues operationally and commercially. [more of this article]

BT’s Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) : QoS at last? – June 08

The introduction of QoS is seen as an important feature by BT, allowing a more sympathetic network for VoIP and other time sensitive applications such as video streaming.

The conclusion to be drawn is that whilst LLU operators already have innovative products for specific markets, i.e. "Voice Ready" Premium Broadband product from suppliers such as Tiscali, BT’s range of QoS enabled WBC products with its (eventual) comprehensive national coverage will offer more opportunities to more Service Providers than ever before ­ if the price is right. [more of this article]

Porting on the Up? ­ June 08

The regulator has given the industry a set of targets to (in essence), create a central database of ported numbers (fixed and mobile) and to ensure that the database is populated accordingly.

This database has to be up and running by the 31st of December 2008 with all ported mobile numbers in it by 1st Sept 2009 and all ported fixed line numbers in it by 31st December 2012.

From our discussion with Service Providers, we ask whether the point is being missed – is it the process rather than the repository that needs fixing? [more of this article]