VoIP in Asia to explode by 2009
Source: voipcentral.org
According to an In-Stat report that was released last week, VoIP in Asia is set to explode by 2009 as it is projected to grow from USD 5.5 billion in 2004 to USD 10 billion by 2009.
The report said that most of the calls were initiated from PSTN terminals or full IP local loops. Revenue for 85.4 percent of VoIP traffic came from traditional public switched telephone networks in 2004.
In-Stat analyst Victor Liu said;
By contrast adoption of local VoIP services is slow due to regulatory barriers in many countries and the dominance of incumbent players.
Liu took Japans example where competitive service providers showed that technological advantage can be exploited to introduce new services and attract new customers “in a loose regulatory framework”.
There are some 8.7 million local VoIP lines in Asia now. In-Stat said a good percentage of long distance calls has already migrated to IP platforms in Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Now with countries with huge populations like India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan opening up slowly to the VoIP idea, I would place my bet on a number much higher than the one cited above. In fact, I would be very surprised if it doesnt touch at least USD 15 billion by 2010. This year and 2007 will be watched very keenly by the VoIP players, watchers and pundits alike.
What do you say?
