Report Finds Big Jump in Carrier Spending on Business VoIP

A research firm has uncovered more signs that business use of VoIP is on a roll. A new report by the Dell'Oro Group found that the sales of carrier IP telephony equipment was up 7 percent in the second quarter of 2009, compared to the previous quarter. The increase came despite a severe downturn in carriers' spending on network modernization in general. The report specifically found that sales of IP business trunking licenses, including SIP trunking, were up 33 percent, while business VoIP or IP Centrex licenses on voice application servers were up a full 85 percent.

The numbers support a common view of the current business use of VoIP: that companies are using IP telephony as way to cut costs during the recession. The higher increase in hosted sales particularly reinforces that perception, because it indicates that the biggest money-saver is also the fastest-growing part of the market. With IP trunking, companies still use their own IP PBXes, but save money on communication charges. With hosted services, they don't even need their own IP PBX.