There is no doubt today that VoIP is taking over the telecom market, and every month increases penetration into services and industries. Competitive carriers are looking at the numerous ways to make money from this exploding technology, but there’s a lingering question as to whether it is profitable to deliver VoIP in a wholesale model? Their customers, typically Service Providers, are looking for their ‘competitive advantage’ into this ‘lowest price’ race, leveraging within three key alternatives for packet telephony : “build” , “buy” or “rent”. Business aspect, there’s no need to invest tens of millions of dollars in wholesale VoIP to join in. Many Telecom Companies have done the work for you. They offer a complete, turnkey VoIP business service and equipment. Now you can start wholesale VoIP business with virtually no investment and yet reap great dividends.
Wholesale VoIP Resellers:
In today’s world, Service providers seeking to deliver VoIP to as wide a customer base as possible may find that becoming a wholesale VoIP reseller is the way to go. Wholesale VoIP may be sold to both other service providers and to enterprises or residential customers.
Reselling IP telephony as a wholesale VoIP company is becoming an increasingly popular business model. For many companies, becoming a wholesale VoIP provider hits the sweet spot between profit and market control. Any firm with a well-established customer base is a good candidate for reselling wholesale VoIP.
Becoming a wholesale VoIP reseller is not a decision that should be taken lightly. It does, however, offer the potential of being very lucrative if done right.
Wholesale Consumer Demand:
An important characteristic of the industry is the complex segmentation of consumer demand and rapid change in the characteristics that are being demanded, both at the end customer and in the intermediate ones (wholesale customers).
Demand coming from ‘packed customers’? will be significantly different of the conventional telecommunications one, were telephony was the unique service to provide and differentiation was based on tariff-distance paradigm, being today’s service offerings closer to data applications rather than telephony. Voice communication (and not old POT telephony) becomes the common feature into several communications applications and devices, but not the unique one.
Messaging, conference, collaboration, web contact centres, etc … requires a common communication format between parties, which is voice, implemented through VoIP technologies. Heterogeneous and rapidly changing customer demands and products are important dynamic influences on the evolving structure of the telecom industry, resulting into a new value-chain.
Telecommunication markets evolution will be driven by ‘packed customers’ demand rather than networks, technology or finance, changing many decades rules into this industry.
Finance in Telecommunication Industry:
Finance institutions had been influencing Telecomm Industry since the beginning, due the business itself was characterized by huge investments, big market shares and bigger capitalization, influencing in many cases top management, who addressed their strategy towards ‘stock’ opportunities rather long term and solid business models. WorldCom crash has been an example of this ‘financial market’ pressure and wrong business management.
Today, the networks has been deployed. New scenario in Telecoms enable new players to deploy services over broadband without proprietary network and this new generation business will not be anymore capital intensive, let’s say these will be innovation intensive.
U.S. VoIP Market:
The US market for VoIP advanced dramatically in 2006-2007, adding 3.8 million VoIP households in 2006, reports In-Stat: As a result, wholesale VoIP revenues grows quickly, as MSOs, Skype, and a myriad of new entrants most lacking network facilities enter the market and drive demand for telephony features and applications, the high-tech market research firm says.
As retail VoIP expands, wholesale VoIP will accelerate quickly, says Bryan Van Dussen, In-Stat analyst. The largest segment remains international VoIP, but we expect the market for local services to surge from 12% of all revenues to 27% by 2010.
Recent research by In-Stat found the following:
- Consumer VoIP adoption will drive wholesale VoIP revenues to $3.8 billion by 2010 from $1.1 billion in 2006.
- In-Stat finds small businesses are driving the growth of hosted services in the U.S. Hosted VoIP seats in the U.S. are expected to grow from 373,000 to 3 million by 2010. Revenues are projected to reach $2 billion.
- International wholesale VoIP termination/origination revenues is experiencing declining growth rates.
- Long-haul wholesale VoIP will experience significant migration of TDM services throughout the forecast period, and become a majority of the international market by 2009.
- Recent In-Stat research, In-Depth Analysis: Wholesale VoIP Forecast: Consumer VoIP Accelerates Demand (#IN0603371TX), covers the market for wholesale Voice Over Internet Protocol services. It provides a market forecast of US VoIP households and wholesale VoIP revenues segmented by main product categories. Analysis of the wholesale market is presented, including market drivers and barriers and three key trends: peering, bundling, and QoS.
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