SIP: this growth does not stop

“Sonya, in the“ rotten west ”, in 3 years TDM will die, and we have only 50 years from now,” SvyatoslavVasiliev tells me to wipe away the tears of envy. He and I are discussing an article by colleagues from GetVoIP about world trends in the development of VoIP, supplanting traditional technologies from PSTN / PSTN (public telephone networks). Under the cut - its translation. A word to the author, Matt Grech.

SIP and VoIP technologies have evolved significantly since their inception. In fact, they now account for almost half of corporate communications traffic, both small and large businesses. And yet, most of the traffic of the latter still goes past the IP channels, as large companies traditionally slowly adapt to changes.

It is expected that SIP technologies will continue to grow rapidly over the next few years and by the end of this year, corporate IP traffic will overtake business communications through PSTN using traditional technologies for this network. Perhaps this will happen even faster, given the fact that large providers are generally going to disable the old PSTN operation scheme. Eastern Management Group conducted a study of the participation of IT-specialists of companies in the formation of global SIP-technologies in the period up to 2020 and came to interesting results.

How is SIP doing?

You can directly answer that SIP is doing just fine. Even taking into account the fact that the infrastructure of services providing SIP trunking and SIP telephony services has already been established, the golden days of the SIP protocol underlying the IP communications solutions are still ahead.

The study of the Eastern Management Group shows that currently more than 60% of companies already use SIP technologies in communications, although the level of its penetration into the business varies depending on its scale. Due to the large sample size, the researchers were able to take into account the data on IT departments of companies across the market.

“The Eastern Management Group study was conducted among 3,500 IT specialists in January 2017. It shows that the global SIP market (including SIP trunks, SIP telephony, SBC, audio and video applications) is growing. And over the next 5 years, the expenditure item for SIP will grow faster than the growth rate of IT budgets in general. ”

Data for companies with different size of business:

Such rapid growth

We can see that in both small companies and large corporations a rapid increase in SIP penetration is expected. Only in the SMB segment we see a jump in traffic growth from 55% (and this is already a large share of it) to 59% in just one year. But what is more interesting is that by 2020 SIP traffic in SMB will be equal to the volume of similar traffic in large business (its share in both segments will be 71%).

It is quite natural that large business is slowly adapting to technologies, having a complex and extensive structure of representative offices, including international ones. Such a structure takes time to reconfigure. At the same time, the need to save communication costs, being important, may not be as urgent for large business as, say, for a startup with a team of ten people.

Although even in 2017 we will see how big business will reach 51% in terms of the use of SIP communications, which is a very significant jump from 44% in the previous year. This is logical: corporations see that IP solutions are becoming increasingly honed under their structure, while realizing that the advantages of SIP are much more than a way to save communication resources.

Increase business productivity

There are a number of advantages of SIP compared to traditional wired telephony technologies. I talked to John Malone, President and CEO of Eastern Management Group, and he was strongly convinced how much better SIP technology is, especially for small businesses.

"If you have a small business, then you are just crazy if you have not done everything possible to use SIP."

I myself do not really understand why small businesses want to spend extra money on traditional technologies - the mere saving of resources through the introduction of a virtual PBX will cover everything, not to mention the implementation of Unified Communications as a whole. As we know, the PSTN, based on traditional technology, can only do this — make phone calls. On the basis of SIP, in the framework of the PSTN, decisions can be built on the organization of team communication and interaction, automatic determination of the status of employees in telephony, and video conferences. The same SIP lies at the heart of the BYoD concept (note: bring your own device - a concept that allows employees to use their own mobile devices to solve work tasks) and in general business mobility on which teamwork is built today.

Perhaps BYoD is not yet the most preferable policy of IT teams in large corporations, but it is not so difficult to develop sufficiently secure solutions in this area for this segment. Nevertheless, it is difficult to argue with the fact that, in essence, all these SIP advantages as compared with traditional technologies are not advantages at all, but rather things of a different order, with which in principle it is impossible to compete.

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Video conferencing alone is a vivid example of how SIP pumps teamwork. The same connection that is used for voice transmission underlies the organization of video communications. There are many solutions for this - from free providers to Amazon's Chime service, so that any business can not only, but must use them. SIP is a driver for corporate video solutions, and they, in turn, are a driver for increasing business productivity.

The complaints about the quality of communication based on SIP that were heard some time ago are no longer relevant. From a conversation with John, I learned that most of the IP-telephony providers are in the ratings on the same level as traditional telephony operators. And, as we have said, operators are even going to abandon support for traditional technologies in the framework of the PSTN and organize it into a structure of connected IP networks around the world.

It's time for SIP

So, the classic PSTN technology will disappear in the next few years - this is already known. The accelerated pace of adoption of SIP technologies by business only contributes to this outcome. According to the study, most companies are already switching or are going to switch to SIP in the very near future.

“According to the Eastern Management Group report, the rapid development of SIP and its adoption by IT directors all over the world is bringing the end of traditional PSTN technologies and the end of their support by telecom operators in the US, UK, Germany, Japan and other countries. This is inspiring news for SIP-providers, virtual PBX, SBC solutions and other services in this area. ”

The study also identified key dates for discontinuing support for traditional technologies in the framework of national PSTN. Most of the providers around the world are going to do it until 2020, some of which are already in the current or next year.

• AT & T in 2020
• Verizon in 2020
• British telecom in 2025
• Northcentral Telecom in 2025
• Deutsche Telekom in 2018
• Swiss Com in 2017
• Telstra in 2021

As we remember, preparations for discontinuing support for traditional PSTN channels in the United States began in 2014, when the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) allowed AT & T to begin the process of converting traditional networks into a broadband IP infrastructure, while adhering to existing PSTN performance standards. Here's how AT & T commented on the FCC decision in its press release :

“The working group working on the National Broadband Transition Strategy and the TAC (Technical Advisory Committee) unanimously acknowledged that creating opportunities for operators to stop supporting outdated PSTN technologies was a necessary step to ensure a unified broadband communications network in the United States. In particular, everyone understands that the cost of servicing the traditional infrastructure with its rapidly declining subscriber base becomes non-payable and takes a significant portion of the investment allocated to the creation of a broadband network. ”

The development of SIP is not the only factor leading to the disconnection of old PSTN technologies, but the growth of this market is at an opportune time falling into the logic of what is happening. Well, in 2020, the business will have no choice, companies will have to massively switch to some form of IP communications, and SIP will head the list of leading technologies in this area.

IP communications are moving forward

SIP as such is much more than SIP trunking, which has so attracted big business, since it has given birth to many new solutions and IP-communication channels. In fact, cloud PBX is only one of the pieces of the puzzle, the rest of which is held together with the help of SIP glue.

As the study explains, the development of SIP is responsible for the emergence of virtual PBX services, and at the same time it is fueled by the growth of their popularity. Since "over the past few years, the virtual PBX market has grown by 500%, SIP telephony and SIP trunking have also significantly increased in terms of sales."

By making SIP a technological basis in their headquarters, companies extend them to their regional or even international representative offices through virtual PBX services. Actually, virtual PBXs are also experiencing steady growth in the last five or so years. And now the share of cloud PBXs in the market of telephony solutions has almost reached 20%.

You can request a detailed research report from the Eastern Management Group .