Frost & Sullivan forecast that sales of VoIP gateways will be worth US$260m this year, and are set to reach $2.9bn in 2006. It added that investors are becoming more confident about VoIP. "Investors are gradually regaining confidence after venture capital funding almost dried up at the end of last year," said Niamh Spillane, research analyst for Frost & Sullivan.
But she warned that the disappointing technical performance of IP-based voice services in the past will prevent VoIP from replacing public switched telephone network (PSTN) traffic as quickly as was previously predicted, and VoIP adoption among firms will grow slowly as a consequence.
"The sluggish-paced consolidation of voice from the PSTN onto packet networks has been riddled with problems," Spillane said. "Compared with traditional circuit-switched networks, VoIP call volumes are still minimal, but they have experienced phenomenal growth, which has in turn led to massive increases in VoIP equipment shipping numbers."
