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Service Providers Landscape
With the onset of broadband in India every service provider is planning to deliver killer applications and content to homes. VoIP is fast becoming the part of the communications technology that will be playing a significant role in the IP networks space along with Ethernet.
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According to IDC India's Quarterly Enterprise Telephony Equipment (ETE) Tracker, 2006 the Indian ETE market stood at $257.5 mn (for the period January 1, 2006 to September 30, 2006), with 2006 expected to close at $358.5 mn. Forecast for the year 2007 is $419.2 mn. These estimates and forecasts include telephony products like Pure IP PBX, Hybrid IP PBX, PBX KTS, IP Phones & A/D Phones.
Source: IDC
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Tata Indicom offers a suite of customized solutions under the 'corporate internet telephony' portfolio, allowing customers to connect with the world using a voice network through the Internet. The company claims that this technology facilitates clear and smooth voice transmission and gives the user up to 70% on all international calls.
Reliance is looking at offering IP telephony as a managed Communication Service. The objective is to provide for a superior user experience and extend a wide range of content and application services for the enterprises in addition to traditional voice services. Reliance's IP Telephony would cater to the requirements of the various user groups within an enterprise. Some of the services that would be delivered through IPT , which are not available with traditional telephony solutions include distributed enterprise networking, content delivery on high end IP phones, video telephony experience, tele presence, unified communication and high quality voice.
BSNL is currently not providing IP telephony services. MTNL has already rolled out its IP telephony services and is currently in the process of registering the user enterprises. Other service providers in the IP telephony space includes Airtel.
CURRENT TRENDS
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Key Players in the Indian IPT Market
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Avaya Global Connect
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Siemens
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Alcatel
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Cisco
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Nortel
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Ericsson
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India, considering it is still a market in its infancy as far as IP telephony is concerned, a market with a lot of potential. Also, India is a competitive marketplace and the fast-growing stature of the country as an outsourcing hub-and the resultant boom in the BPO space-means that the demand in the market is set to soar faster than anywhere else in the world.
Though regulatory issues remain, it is quality telecom solutions and services, and operational support at the back-end, which will determine success or otherwise for enterprises .
According to Reliance, the Indian telephony market is not very different from its global peers. The company expects enterprises to start migrating to IPT in the near future. The adoption rate, especially in India, is expected to be a function of the price. Today, IP PBX vendors largely drive IP telephony in the enterprise segment and there is a prohibitively high capex involved in the same. The entry of service provider in this market will make IP telephony more affordable since the solution will now be available as a service against a monthly charge. The only possible capex would be that required for IP phones.
Says Sajan Paul of Nortel, "Indian market is as aggressive as any other developed market for IP telephony. We have seen IP telephony as the default choice for any green-field customer. The key features that drive this trend is the mobility features combined with simplicity of installation, advanced unified communication features etc." IDC's take: IP telephony is struggling to establish a foothold in the market since uptake of pure IP solutions is predominantly in greenfield opportunities. The exorbitantly high prices of IP phones is one of the major challenge that continues to hamper the growth of this market. Voice is carried over the network, which is shared by various applications. This causes time lag or poor voice quality at the receiver's end.
WHAT'S IN STORE
Going forward, IP telephony is expected to become the foundation to unify communication applications and assess how business and communication processes can be changed or integrated with IP telephony and collaborative applications. Moreover, the success of the SMB market and specific vertical markets (such as manufacturing, retail, healthcare, etc) will see a stronger success rate of IP adoption with vendors getting aggressive in these areas.
Pragati Simlote
dqindia@cybermedia.co.in
Source: Dataquest
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