Gartner: Mobile VoIP Is Coming, Slowly

Gartner: Mobile VoIP Is Coming, Slowly

Richard Martin

Mobile VoIP services will eventually make up more than half of total mobile voice traffic, according to new research from Gartner – but it’s going to take a decade to reach that point.

“Ten years from now, more than half of mobile voice traffic will be carried end-to-end using VoIP,” said Akshay Sharma, a Gartner research director, in a statement.

The obstacles to more rapid adoption of mobile VoIP include the slow roll out of 4G broadband networks, due in part to the current recession, and the carriers’ hub-and-spoke model of deploying 4G in major metro areas and spreading out from there.

Thus while non-network-based competitors using VoIP will pose a “huge and direct” challenge to the carriers’ nearly $700 billion global voice market, they have plenty of time to adapt if they begin now, says the research firm’s new report, “Emerging Technology Analysis: Mobile VoIP, Global Consumer Communications Services.”

“Mass-scale adoption of end-to-end mobile VoIP calling will not happen until fourth-generation (4G) networks are fully implemented in 2017,” said Tole Hart, research director at Gartner.
Some of the twists and turns that the adoption of mobile VoIP faces were highlighted by a pair of related news developments. In its new set of guidelines for the forthcoming Windows Market for Mobile application store, Microsoft has banned “applications that enable VoIP (Voice over IP) services over a mobile operator network.” Officials of the European Union, meanwhile, have indicated that they will force mobile operators to allow VoIP calls on handsets.

At any rate, voice service may become less paramount over the coming years: “The biggest competitors to mobile VoIP may be text messaging and e-mail,” Gartner stated, because text-based communications are easier, faster, and “less emotional.”