Voice minutes to double by 2015

Ovum report finds that voice will dominate telecoms usage for the next decade

Voice will remain the main application of telecoms for the next decade, according to a report published by analyst company Ovum.

The report, Voice: A Vision of the Future, predicts that the number of voice minutes will almost double during the next 10 years, reaching a worldwide total of 16 trillion per year by 2015. Ovum said that this equates to 11 minutes per day for each of the four billion telephone users across the globe.

“People love to talk and they’re still going to love to talk,” said the analyst’s telecoms strategy practice leader and research director, Mike Cansfield. “To say that voice is dead is patently wrong.”

The rise in voice revenues is set to peak in 2015. According to the report, the growth of telephony in the developing world, together with the emergence of mobile and IP telephony, will be the main reasons for the increase. But the way voice is delivered will change, Ovum said. It predicted that non-VoIP mobile calls will be the largest sector by 2015, accounting for 70 percent of all voice minutes.

Meanwhile, fixed-mobile substitution (FMS) and VoIP-over-broadband will be the main threats to PSTN operators such as BT. “BT is taking significant risks with FMC [fixed-mobile convergence] since it’s having to gamble on a proprietary solution,” argued Ovum’s telecoms research director, Tony Lavender. “BT can’t wait 18 months to introduce FMC because FMS is eating into its revenues.”

Cansfield said that BT is facing problems because it does not have a mobile arm or a high street presence, unlike competitors such as Carphone Warehouse.

Summarising the market, Ovum’s report predicts that there will be little opportunity for operators offering just voice in the long term. “The market will be mostly defined by bundling and packaging, including some mix of messaging, TV, video, web access, portal, gaming, etc – as well as voice,” it adds. “ Indeed, the voice component will increasingly be taken for granted.”