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Clear signs that VoIP is driving demand for fiber May 3, 2013

Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.
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An engaging talk from Kris Barker from BT Wholesale at Convergence North bought up some interesting points regarding the growth of a fiber network in the UK. One point especially came through which was that the relationship between fiber and the growth of SIP trunks and VoIP. Kris mentioned that he believed VoIP was the key product driving the sales of Fiber in the business markKris mentioned Fiber coverage in the UK is increasing rapidly with 54% of business premises having potential of a fiber connection in 2014 compared with 35% in 2013. In the consumer market coverage is also increasing with 64% of homes predicted to be able to receive fiber in 2014, growing from 56% in 2013.

We are already seeing a relationship between VoIP and fiber reach and this increase in coverage is only going to increase the demand for Hosted and SIP as fiber becomes more prevalent. Increased speeds will also help the spread of VoIP as FttP speeds can now achieve 330Mbit/s downstream and 30Mbit/s upstream, facilitating the high bandwidth needed for voice products.

Through one of the many surveys conducted at the summit, the channel audience present perceived the biggest barrier to them selling was a perceived lack of coverage with 54% of those present thinking this was the most pressing concern.

This lack of understanding about the levels of coverage was an interesting, and clearly BT and others need to get the message out to the channel more clearly about the coverage which is now available.

Increased Bandwidth & therefore the deployment of Fiber is a key enabler for channel partners to sell new services (such as VoIP) as well as selling other apps and will be a key enabler in selling new cloud based services.  We therefore expect channels & service providers to get very focused on migrating their bases in the coming year before a competitor takes their customers.

With fiber coverage set to reach 85% the UK by 2015, the possibility for FttP to increase is massive and with the growth of SIP and hosted VoIP driving the demand for fiber the possibilities for channel partners are huge.

SIP Trunking still talk of the town at Convergence Summit May 2, 2013

Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.
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At the Convergence Summit in Manchester this week much of the talk focused around the growth of SIP trunks in the market. At the summit this year there was the ability to ask the audience questions and get immediate feedback.  These surveys clearly demonstrated that the SIP market is booming at the moment with 67% of those asked were selling SIP at the moment. Also in a session where Matt Townend from illume was presenting only 2 % of the audience were just selling ISDN. Also the audience confirmed that the main reason that SIP is so successful over ISDN was cost with 58% calling it the main reason why their customers were moving to SIP. Other reasons were the ability to overlay other UC services along with SIP (23%) and disaster recovery (13%).  These results back up illume research recently released report on the market that demonstrated some similar trends.

 

Although clearly the market is booming the audience highlighted Security as the biggest concern with 62% of those who answered were worried about security problems with SIP trunks. This was echoed in talks with providers such as Hello Telecom at the event who highlighted the fact that they will be upping their security on products sold and giving more information to end users in ways to protect themselves. 

 

This is not to say that ISDN and hosted VoIP is completely safe compared to SIP trunking. Criminals are not stupid and they will always try to find a way to get around any security put in place; the goal of companies is to keep their systems one step ahead. Most of the VoIP companies such as VanillaIP and Hello are introducing credit locking where if unusual usage is noticed, the system will shut down so that it can get examined and see if fraudulent activity was taking place. This reduces the instances of fraud and will be a useful tool to prevent massive costs from piling up. In terms of the benefits of SIP over ISDN, it is next to impossible to build security into ISDN lines whereas SIP connections can have security systems built into them.  

 

With the SIP market evolving to the point where security might become a differentiating factor between systems .The future of the SIP market may see underlying SIP trunks being more commoditized and where differentiation will be through applications and the service wrap and it is hard to imagine that security will not be one of the key drivers in this.

 

However it is clear that a large percentage of the UK channel is now fully focused around SIP, and we expect to see the growth of the last few years continue to accelerate.