This compares with US$77.9 million the region (which comprises Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand) posted in revenues last year.
According to Frost & Sullivan's Asia Pacific IP Telephony Services Equipment and Market Report, the projected figures translate to a compound annual growth rate of 57.1 percent.
In addition, the marketing consultants said it expects VoIP traffic in the region to hit about 11 billion minutes by 2006, compared with about 261 million minutes last year.
"We expect VoIP services to be an increasing proportion of the total originating voice traffic in Southeast Asia because of value added applications and the possible cost savings in long distance as the key introduction driver for VoIP services in newer markets," Frost & Sullivan industry manager for VoIP in Asia Pacific Nitin Bhat said.
Without revealing specifics, Bhat said value-added services would drive the penetration of VoIP services in the enterprise market. He also cited "increasing deregulation of the telecommunications market, allowing new VoIP service providers in the market and also forcing incumbents to offer such service" as another major factor to fuel growth in the market.
Bhat went on to say that "competition among Internet Protocol telephony service providers and the deployment of broadband networks to improve quality could lead to greater proliferation of the (VoIP) service".
He declined to provide a breakdown of revenues generated by the five countries in the report, but noted that Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia were strong-growth VoIP markets.
"Singapore has a large presence of enterprises and it still remains as a hub in the region," Baht said. "As for Malaysia and Indonesia, their underlying population base could see more people making calls over VoIP as compared with public switched telephone network," he added.
Frost & Sullivan said it expects Singapore to contribute 12.7 percent of the total VoIP traffic in 2006, compared with 23.7 percent last year. He explained that against the other four markets in Southeast Asia, Singapore's market is saturated. According to Baht, the island already has about 50 to 60 players who can offer VoIP services.
He also noted that 20 percent of the total outgoing traffic in Singapore is VoIP, compared with the one to two percent in the other countries.
Prepaid VoIP calling card
Meanwhile, Frost & Sullivan also projected that Asia Pacific (including Japan) is expected to generate revenues of about US$15.3 billion in the prepaid VoIP calling card market by 2007.
This compares with about US$1 billion the region achieved in revenues last year. In addition, the prepaid VoIP market could see about 150 billion minutes by 2007 compared with about 4.9 billion minutes in 2000.
The company cited among others, "convenience and flexibility" for users to call from various locations with their calling cards, the ease and cheapness of getting a calling card service provider licence in most Asia Pacific countries and the large immigrant population, representing a substantial customer base for discount calling plans for specific destinations as main drivers of growth in the Asia Pacific calling card market.
Frost & Sullivan also projected that the global prepaid VoIP calling card market is expected to increase rapidly to US$21.9 billion by 2007, up from US$1.27 billion last year.
