North American voice over IP service revenue topped US$1.3 billion in 2004, and is expected to soar 1,431% to US$19.9 billion in 2009.

These are the findings of telecommunications market analyst Infonetics Research's latest report, VoIP services annual market size and forecast for North America.

"VoIP services are relatively new to the telecommunications scene, so the growth rates will be extremely high as communication networks and services trend towards VoIP," said Kevin Mitchell, directing analyst for Infonetics and author of the report. "As carriers migrate their network towards IP over the next 5 years, more services are inevitably next generation VoIP services. This is a very early look, as VoIP services revenue represented less than 1% of total wireline carrier revenue in North America in 2004.

"Growth is driven by carrier footprint and solution expansion, marketing, and service bundling, leading to more adoption by new business/government/education and residential/SOHO customers and increased usage at more sites. Our forecast also assumes that revenue growth is due to incremental revenue from add-on VoIP applications, such as conferencing, remote office integration, presence/location-based services, and collaboration."

REPORT HIGHLIGHTS
  -   The number of residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers in North America is forecast to climb from 1.1 million in 2004 to 20.8 million in 2008
  -   Managed IP PBX services, an earlier arrival than hosted offerings and aimed at medium and large organizations, make up just over half of the market in 2004
  -   Business hosted VoIP service revenue will exceed that of managed IP PBX services by 2006, as thousands of small and medium businesses adopt hosted offerings

The report presents market size and forecasts for hosted VoIP and managed IP PBX VoIP services, including a hosted VoIP split for residential/SOHO, business, and wholesale in North America. The report also includes a residential/SOHO subscriber forecast.