OTT voice earnings will go over the top to hit over US $10 billion by 2020, a fivefold increase over five years at the telco’s expense.
Analyst firm Juniper has released its latest research showing that the current mostly free OTT (over the top) voice services will generate significantly more revenue by 2020 - but that operators will ‘fight back.’
Its research OTT is called ‘Future Voice Strategies: mVoIP, Carrier OTT, WebRTC, HD Voice & Video Calling 2015-2020’ and it found that ‘as most mVoIP services were offered as a free or low cost service, only a small minority of OTT players had generated a significant revenues from the service.’
Naturally, the research is for sale to relevant parties at the usual relevant prices.
Juniper notes that ‘OTT application providers such as Skype and WhatsApp would experience a significant rise in traffic and revenue potential as 4G network rollouts accelerate, thereby increasing their capability to offer high-quality VoIP (Voice over IP) calls’, and while revenues were low, ‘the more successful service providers had developed indirect or adjacent revenues on the back of the core voice offerings, with a number offering in-app purchases or – as with Daum Kakao – a social networking platform.’
Operators, however, aren’t laying low, because none of them want to end up just as dumb pipes.
What operators have done, according to Juniper, is to react to traditional voice revenues going into sharp decline thanks to OTT voice by starting to adopt ‘new business models mimicking those of OTT players.’
These models include directly offering functionality such as VoLTE (Voice over LTE) and Wi-Fi calling through the handset - something we’re seeing with Telstra in Australia with VoLTE, and with Telstra and Optus in the Wi-Fi calling realm.
There are even OTT services such as Fring, which are ‘are becoming increasingly important in helping operators compete with the OTT business model’ through a white label service.
However, Juniper cautioned that ‘such initiatives historically had mixed results, with both Telefonica’s TuMe and O2’s TuGo service having been discontinued.’
Other key findings from the report include:
VoLTE will see widespread adoption among MNOs, with operator billed VoLTE revenues approaching $100 billion by 2020, representing 12% of the global operator billed service revenue including voice and data services.
There’s also the finding that HD voice adoption has been steadily rising since 2009, with over 130 operators worldwide offering Mobile HD Voice.