Good Prospects for VoIP
THE sudden interest in voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) has heightened over the last two years because of the immense opportunities that it presents in terms of cost savings, productivity gains, operational efficiencies, new applications and business functionalities.
VoIP is fundamentally a communications technology which enables phone calls to be carried over the Internet. With the technology, companies no longer have to contend with expensive-to-maintain phone infrastructure of conventional analogue phones, thus reducing telecommunications costs while increasing productivity at the same time.
Local adoption. Companies across Asia, and Malaysia notwithstanding, have been leveraging on IP-based applications and services, in particular VoIP. Adoption rate is going at a steady pace, predicted to hit 60 per cent in 2008. A Malaysian senior official was recently quoted as saying that the country’s VoIP business is expected to generate RM1.5 billion in revenue by end of 2010, almost doubling the figure expected this year.
The VoIP service in Malaysia is unique when compared with many other countries. VoIP service providers use IP telephony as the medium to transverse voice traffic and provide their service via reselling minutes over the public switched telephone network, or sometimes a combination of both.
Realising benefits. IP telephony is increasingly becoming popular because it uses the Internet and intranet to deliver real-time communication between callers at a lower cost, and the applications have built-in reliability mechanisms that facilitate personal mobility, call forwarding, e-mail and multi-cast conferencing.
In the corporate arena, VoIP technology is gaining more traction because more organisations are leveraging on the operational efficiencies it brings.
Enhanced business communications brought about by IP private branch exchanges, multimedia collaborative applications, unified messaging and efficient video-conferencing can improve employees’ productivity, and remote offices can also leverage on the centralised IP PBX architecture with distributed IP phones providing consistent user experience for all offices regardless of size or location.
Overall, much interest has been generated, even among small and medium- sized businesses, for a converged IP voice and data network solution. VoIP and other IP communications features are currently embedded in business software to expand the usefulness of future applications, and VoIP becomes part of Web services which open the communications platform for any business application within the enterprise, which will benefit from making it easier to connect with other users.
More opportunities. IP telephony networks are constantly evolving, and the ability to provide ongoing network monitoring and network consultation services are key competencies for IP telephony’s success.
These skillsets open up new service opportunities and customer value for resellers. And now that VoIP technology has gained mainstream market acceptance among many residential and business voice users, service providers and vendors are looking to the next challenge: wireless VoIP.
Two business areas where VoIP is expected to grow in are corporate intranets and commercial extranets. New VoIP applications and services will provide customers with more choices and greater flexibility, which in turn, will generate more business for companies.
While VoIP technology has made significant progress since its introduction, the future holds much promise for enhancement and usage expansion. The future development of VoIP greatly depends on the resolution of technical and logistical problems and the establishment of adequate standards.
Bearing in mind the challenges in VoIP implementation, the general market trend certainly does indicate there will be more adoption of IP PBX ports and legacy digital PBX ports.
Looking ahead, the Malaysian market will continue to see the quality of the VoIP telephony experience go up dramatically, and key industry players will continue in their quest to develop new technologies to integrate voice, data and video to enable seamless real-time collaboration.
The writer is chief operating officer of VoiZIP Pacific Ltd.
source:www.redorbit.com