News | 09 Jul 2007 :
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) services
will become the norm after 2010 and will rapidly begin to dominate the world's
telecoms markets, industry experts predict.
ABI Research expects that almost half of
all telecoms customers will be using at least one SIP-based service by 2012,
and are likely to have many services from multiple devices able to communicate
across the web.
This will generate over $150 billion in
service revenues annually by 2012, with cumulative infrastructure capital
expenditure of over $10 billion by that date, according to the analyst firm.
ABI's Worldwide SIP Services Market paper
noted that the move to all-IP networks is the chosen path for introducing new
services, with next-generation networks as the ultimate goal.
"The path to this all-IP goal is
complicated. Migrating existing services onto IP networks while retaining
resources until they can be taken out of service is not a straightforward
process," said ABI analyst Ian Cox.
"Mobile operators' voice services are
already optimised to reduce network traffic, and the move to VoIP is not an
easy choice until the introduction of LTE or HSPA. One method that has gained
some momentum is to use an IP overlay based on SIP."
Cox explained that this approach allows new
services to be designed and launched using a well-supported standard.
"Using SIP, telephony becomes another
web application which can be integrated into other internet services," he
said. "It allows service providers to build converged voice and multimedia
services."
ABI expects almost 1.2 billion VoIP users
to be active by 2012, and that most users will also subscribe to several forms
of messaging and video sharing driven by the interest in user-generated
content.
Additional services supported by SIP will
include "core" items such as presence, click-to-dial, buddy lists, e-mail
and web access which will be included as standard in any service offering, and
bundled with broadband access.
A portion of the VoIP users will also be
connected to a fixed-mobile convergence service.