For those of a certain age, the admonishment to “Choose wisely, Grasshopper” evokes an image of a 1970’s TV show, wherein an older mentor is tutoring a young student in the ways of the ancient martial art, Kung Fu.
The same advice can be given today to those CEOs and CTOs weighing the idea of adding VoIP to their arsenal, and even more importantly mVoIP, or Mobile VoIP. While VoIP has been enjoying growing popularity, its mobile counterpart has been struggling somewhat, if a new report is to be believed.
The study, “Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Market Forecast 2014-2019: Prospects for Mobile (mVoIP) vs. Static VoIP” by Visiongain (News - Alert), takes a closer look at the pros and cons of both.
“The drastic increase in the number of VoIP subscriptions brought by … mobile applications has not yet achieved sustainable revenue growth, as they lack credible monetization models and are expected to face severe competition,” the report notes. “Until now, the mVoIP market has been in a race to the bottom in which the effectiveness of the market is measured in terms of active subscribers, but not in terms of revenues.”
Visiongain notes that it expects incumbent operators to struggle at competing directly with OTT (over the top) providers. “This can be witnessed in the way telcos are applying pressure to create regulatory changes against OTT providers,” it says. “One of these battles is being fiercely fought in the US as ISPs look to create a two-tier Internet while Internet companies fight back against this anti-competitive initiative.”
The report is referring to the current battle over Net Neutrality, which even President Obama has weighed in on.
Still, the report notes that mVoIP providers have been able to disrupt the global telecommunications market by providing not only free OTT services, “but also platforms that create higher customer engagement and provide more diverse revenue opportunities than standard voice and SMS services.”
In short, the opportunity is there, but it’s going to take some aggressive marketing and equally aggressive upgrades to make it a truly viable technology. The question is, how long will prospective customers be willing to wait?
Edited by Maurice Nagle