Voice Services Predicted to Surpass New Technologies for the Foreseeable Future
Voice services, overlooked in the rush to broadband, WiMAX, WiFi and other new technologies, will remain the “goose that laid the golden egg” for the rest of the century, Ovum Telecom Strategy Research head Mike Cansfield said Tues. Although the best days of telecom are over, he said, voice lines and usage continue to grow. Revenue is beginning to slide, but voice will still represent 2/3 of all telephony revenue by 2015. To say “voice is dead is nonsense,” Cansfield said in an interview following the release of Ovum’s report on Voice: A Vision of the Future.
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There are 680 million lines in Western Europe, Cansfield said: By 2010 that number will have risen by 22%, but by 2015 it will begin to fall. With PSTN and mobile growth declining, line increases are now being fueled by broadband deployment, he said, but by 2015, anyone who wants broadband will have it. While call prices continue to fall, the amount of time spent online is on the upswing, Cansfield said. In 5 years, voice revenue will drop 7%, in 10 another 17%, as Europe’s market matures, he said.
In N. America, mobile penetration is around 50%, compared to 90-95% in Europe, Cansfield said. N. America is catching up and can be expected to have the same pattern as Europe but with a slight time lag -- 15% growth in the number of lines by 2010, with an additional 4% rise by 2015. As with Europe, anyone who wants mobile or broadband services by then will have them, he said.
The volume of voice calls, however, is expected to grow consistently over the next 10 years, Cansfield said. N. America will account for only 26% of the world’s voice market by 2015. At the moment, fixed services are bigger than mobile, and that will be true until around 2010, though PSTN call revenue will decline. By 2015, the overall voice market will decline as calls become cheaper and declining revenues aren’t offset by increasing numbers of calls, Cansfield said.
Globally, Ovum predicts a 42% increase in lines from 2005-2010, a result of the burgeoning use of mobile phones, Cansfield said. Many developing countries are leap-frogging over traditional telephony straight into mobile services, he said. In some countries, people will only ever connect to the Internet via mobile devices. And, unlike in Europe and N. America, voice revenue across the world will increase, peaking around 2015 because of mobile services, he said. Voice minutes will nearly double over the next 10 years, reaching 16 trillion by 2015, due to the growth of telephony in the developing world, as well as the emergence of mobile telephony and VoIP services, the report said.
In the long run, “there will be little opportunity for operators offering ‘just voice,'” Ovum said. The market will be largely defined by bundling and packaging. By 2015, the telecom market will have consolidated -- consolidation has been going on for some time -- and all major retail players in developed countries will offer “household bundles” that include broadband, VoIP, IPTV and mobile. it said.
More regulation will be needed, Cansfield said. Mobile termination and roaming charges and naked DSL are some of the areas where it will be appropriate. In Europe, regulation at the pan-EU level will be necessary, after which other countries can be expected to follow Europe’s lead.